Language Evolution and Computation Bibliography

This chapter argues that linguistic universals need to be understood in terms of a model of language that incorporates both learned statistical patterns (ahabitsa) and derivations (arulesa). It presents an Analysis by Synthesis model, where sentences are initially given a basic semantic interpretation based on canonical statistical patterns of syntax, but sentences are also at the same time assigned a separate derivation, reflecting the syntactic relationship between constituents. It proposes a universal constraint on language that is necessary for the model to link statistical patterns with syntactic derivations. This constraintathe acanonical form constraintaarequires that all languages must have a set of statistically dominant structural patterns indicating the mapping between syntactic constructions and their meanings. Moreover, it should be possible to approximate the meaning of complex derivations in terms of such canonical patterns without recourse to a full derivational analysis. This approach as complementary to the Minimalist program in that it seeks to determine what is minimally required to explain language acquisition and use.

When we transform thoughts into speech, we do something that no other animal ever achieves. Children acquire this ability effortlessly and without being taught, as though discovering how to walk. Damage to specific areas of the brain that are critical to language shows the profound selectivity of cerebral organization, underlining the exquisite biological structure of language and its computational features. Recent advances bring new insights into the neurogenetic basis of language, its development, and evolution, but also reveal deep holes in our understanding.

Christiansen & Chater (C&C) have taken the interactionist approach to linguistic universals to an extreme, adopting the metaphor of language as an organism. This metaphor adds no insights to five decades of analyzing language universals as the result of interaction of linguistically unique and general cognitive systems. This metaphor is also based on an outmoded view of classical Darwinian evolution and has no clear basis in biology or cognition.