Language Evolution and Computation Bibliography

The recent blossoming of evolutionary linguistics has resulted in a variety of theories that attempt to provide a selective scenario for the evolution of early language. However, their overabundance makes many researchers sceptical of such theorising. Here, we suggest that a more rigorous approach is needed towards their construction although, despite justified scepticism, there is no agreement as to the criteria that should be used to determine the validity of the various competing theories. We attempt to fill this gap by providing criteria upon which the various historical narratives can be judged. Although individually none of these criteria are highly constraining, taken together they could provide a useful evolutionary framework for thinking about the evolution of human language.

There has been a rapid increase in the use of phylogenetic methods to study the evolution of languages and culture. Languages fit a tree model of evolution well, at least in their basic vocabulary, challenging the view that blending, or admixture among neighbouring groups, was predominant in cultural history. Here, we argue that we can use language trees to test hypotheses about not only cultural history and diversification, but also bio-cultural adaptation. Phylogenetic comparative methods take account of the non-independence of cultures (Galton's problem), which can cause spurious statistical associations in comparative analyses. Advances in phylogenetic methods offer new possibilities for the analysis of cultural evolution, including estimating the rate of evolution and the direction of coevolutionary change of traits on the tree. They also enable phylogenetic uncertainty to be incorporated into the analyses, so that one does not have to treat phylogenetic trees as if they were known without error.

Research into the emergence and evolution of human language has received unprecedented attention during the past 15 years. Efforts to better understand the processes of language emergence and evolution have proceeded in two main directions: from the top-down (linguists) and from the bottom-up (cognitive scientists). Language can be viewed as an invading process that has had profound impact on the human phenotype at all levels, from the structure of the brain to modes of cultural interaction. In our view, the most effective way to form a connection between the two efforts (essential if theories for language evolution are to reflect the constraints imposed on language by the brain) lies in computational modelling, an approach that enables numerous hypotheses to be explored and tested against objective criteria and which suggest productive paths for empirical researchers to then follow. Here, with the aim of promoting the cross-fertilization of ideas across disciplines, we review some of the recent research that has made use of computational methods in three principal areas of research into language evolution: language emergence, language change, and language death.

Human language has enabled our species to exchange information and to formulate ideas; understanding how human linguistic faculties evolved is one of the great challenges in evolutionary theory. Studies of the evolution of human language can be broadly separated into two types of approaches: those that consider the (e.g. phylogenetic) relationships between existing languages and their common ancestors; and those that try to understand the evolution of the human language capacity itself. For the latter case, Martin Nowak and co-workers have now shown that evolutionary game theory provides a framework in which the evolution of linguistic elements, such as word formation and syntax, can be investigated. These recent studies show that natural selection will favour the evolution of such `human' linguistic elements from simple animal communication if they enable more reliable exchange of relevant, that is fitness-enhancing, information.