Edit Book :: Language Origins: Perspectives on Evolution
2005
Coevolution of the language faculty and language(s) with decorrelated encodingsPDF
Language Origins: Perspectives on Evolution 14, 2005
this paper, I argue that the decorrelation argumentdoes not undermine the account of the evolution of the language faculty via geneticassimilation nor the extended coevolutionary account in which the evolvinglanguage faculty in turn exerts linguistic selection pressure ...
Infant-Directed Speech and Evolution of LanguagePDF
Language Origins: Perspectives on Evolution 5, 2005
Language is an extremely complex phenomenon and evolutionary accounts of it are therefore often considered problematic. Previous work by the author has been concerned with finding mechanisms that could simplify the way by which language has evolved. One ...
Evolution of Language Diversity: Why fitness counts
Language Origins: Perspectives on Evolution 16, 2005
Abstract We examined the role of fitness, commonly assumed without proof to be conferred by the mastery of language, in shaping the dynamics of language evolution. To that end, we introduced island migration (a concept borrowed from population genetics) into the shared ...
Deception and Mate Selection: Some implications for relevance and the evolution of language
Language Origins: Perspectives on Evolution 10, 2005
The Mirror System Hypothesis: How did protolanguage evolve?
Language Origins: Perspectives on Evolution 2, 2005
The Potential Role of Production in the Evolution of Syntax
Language Origins: Perspectives on Evolution 7, 2005
Acquisition and evolution of quasi-regular languages: two puzzles for the price of onePDF
Language Origins: Perspectives on Evolution 15, 2005
Abstract The quasi-productivity of natural languages appears to pose two difficult problems for language research. Firstly, why do irregularities in natural language not disappear over time, leaving languages completely regular (a transmission problem), and secondly, how ...
Mutual Exclusivity: Communicative Success Despite Conceptual DivergencePDF
Language Origins: Perspectives on Evolution 17, 2005
Traditional explanatory accounts of the evolution of language frequently appeal to a “conventional neo-Darwinian process”(Pinker & Bloom 1990: 707), assuming that humans have evolved an innate, genetically-encoded language acquisition device, which ...
Cultural Selection for Learnability: Three principles underlying the view that language adapts to be learnablePDF
Language Origins: Perspectives on Evolution 13, 2005
Here is a far-reaching and vitally important question for those seeking to understand the evolution of language: Given a thorough understanding of whatever cognitive processes are relevant to learning, understanding, and producing language, would such an ...
How Did Language go Discrete?
Language Origins: Perspectives on Evolution 3, 2005
'Discrete infinity'refers to the creative property of language by which speakers construct and hearers understand, from a finite set of discrete units, an infinite variety of expressions of thought, imagination, and feeling. This is the property that Chomsky has been ...
Computer Modelling Widens the Focus of Language StudyPDF
Language Origins: Perspectives on Evolution, 2005
Initial Syntax and Modern Syntax: Did the clause evolve from the syllable?
Language Origins: Perspectives on Evolution 6, 2005
Linguistic Prerequisites in the Primate Lineage
Language Origins: Perspectives on Evolution 12, 2005
Abstract 1. Language is perhaps the single most important feature that distinguishes humans from the rest of the living world. Human language is an open-ended system of communication in which syntactic rules encode information of great complexity, and it is ...
An Avian Perspective on Language Evolution: Implications of simultaneous development of vocal and physical object combinations by a Grey parrot (Psittacus erithacus)
Language Origins: Perspectives on Evolution 11, 2005
The Evolutionary Origin of Morphology
Language Origins: Perspectives on Evolution 8, 2005
The Evolution of Grammatical Structures and 'Functional Need' Explanations
Language Origins: Perspectives on Evolution 9, 2005
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From Holistic to Discrete Speech Sounds: The Blind Snow-Flake Maker HypothesisPDF
Language Origins: Perspectives on Evolution 4:68-99, 2005
Sound is a medium used by humans to carry information. The existence of this kind of medium is a pre-requisite for language. It is organized into a code, called speech, which provides a repertoire of forms that is shared in each language community. This code is necessary to ...MORE ⇓
Sound is a medium used by humans to carry information. The existence of this kind of medium is a pre-requisite for language. It is organized into a code, called speech, which provides a repertoire of forms that is shared in each language community. This code is necessary to support the linguistic interactions that allow humans to communicate. How then may a speech code be formed prior to the existence of linguistic interactions? Moreover, the human speech code is characterized by several properties: speech is digital and compositional (vocalizations are made of units re-used systematically in other syllables); phoneme inventories have precise regularities as well as great diversity in human languages; all the speakers of a language community categorize sounds in the same manner, but each language has its own system of categorization, possibly very different from every other. How can a speech code with these properties form? These are the questions we will approach in the paper. We will study them using the method of the artificial. We will build a society of artificial agents, and study what mechanisms may provide answers. This will not prove directly what mechanisms were used for humans, but rather give ideas about what kind of mechanism may have been used. This allows us to shape the search space of possible answers, in particular by showing what is sufficient and what is not necessary. The mechanism we present is based on a low-level model of sensorymotor interactions. We show that the integration of certain very simple and non language-specific neural devices allows a population of agents to build a speech code that has the properties mentioned above. The originality is that it pre-supposes neither a functional pressure for communication, nor the ability to have coordinated social interactions (they do not play language or imitation games). It relies on the self-organizing properties of a generic coupling between perception and production both within agents, and on the interactions between agents.