Language Evolution and Computation Bibliography

This article explains the concept of symbolic reference. Symbolic reference is a distinguishing feature of human language, in contrast with species-typical vocalizations and communicative gestures. The symbolic reference must be acquired by learning, and lacks both the natural associations and trans- generational reproductive consequences that would make such references biologically evolvable. The absence of natural constraints also facilitates the capacity for distinct symbol combinations to determine unique references. The asymmetric relationship between features of the sign vehicle and features of the referential relationship explains that conventional typographical characters can refer both symbolically and non-symbolically. A complex sign vehicle such as the diagram of an electronic circuit can serve as an icon even though it is composed of symbols. Once the many symbolic sign components are interpreted, their collective configuration is seen as iconic of the organization of the physical circuit that is relevant to language. The combinatorial organization of symbolic legisigns comprising a phrase, sentence, or narrative may constitute a higher order iconic, indexical, or symbolic referential function. The basis of the symbolic reference of words is the systematicity that unifies the network of indexical relationships that they constitute and depend upon. The network of indexical relationships is also reflexive, circular, and ultimately self- referential. The use of linguistic symbols such as words, to refer to specific objects, events, or properties of things, requires indexical mediation.

Our understanding of speech and language disorders may be aided by information about the constraints and predispositions contributed by neural developmental processes. As soon as we begin to look at human neuroanatomy and development from a comparative perspective, it is possible to recognize a number of ways that human brains diverge from the general pattern of other ape and monkey brains. These divergences may offer clues to language evolution. Large-scale quantitative changes in the relative proportions of brain regions (as opposed to just overall expansion) offer some of the most obvious clues. Additional information about how axons are guided in their extensions to distant developmental targets and how competitive trophic processes sculpt these connections also provides a way to understand how gross quantitative changes in cell numbers could affect circuit organization and ultimately behavior.

This revolutionary book provides fresh answers to long-standing questions of human origins and consciousness. Drawing on his breakthrough research in comparative neuroscience, Terrence Deacon offers a wealth of insights into the significance of symbolic thinking: from the co-evolutionary exchange between language and brains over two million years of hominid evolution to the ethical repercussions that followed man's newfound access to other people's thoughts and emotions.

Informing these insights is a new understanding of how Darwinian processes underlie the brain's development and function as well as its evolution. In contrast to much contemporary neuroscience that treats the brain as no more or less than a computer, Deacon provides a new clarity of vision into the mechanism of mind. It injects a renewed sense of adventure into the experience of being human.