scholarly journals Brains, genes, and language evolution: A new synthesis

2008 ◽  
Vol 31 (5) ◽  
pp. 537-558 ◽  
Author(s):  
Morten H. Christiansen ◽  
Nick Chater
Keyword(s):  
Language Learners ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Language Evolution ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
Evolution Of Language ◽  
New Synthesis ◽  
Target Article ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Close Fit

AbstractOur target article argued that a genetically specified Universal Grammar (UG), capturing arbitrary properties of languages, is not tenable on evolutionary grounds, and that the close fit between language and language learners arises because language is shaped by the brain, rather than the reverse. Few commentaries defend a genetically specified UG. Some commentators argue that we underestimate the importance of processes of cultural transmission; some propose additional cognitive and brain mechanisms that may constrain language and perhaps differentiate humans from nonhuman primates; and others argue that we overstate or understate the case against co-evolution of language genes. In engaging with these issues, we suggest that a new synthesis concerning the relationship between brains, genes, and language may be emerging.

Effects of Compression on Language Evolution

2000 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 129-143 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tracy K. Teal ◽  
Charles E. Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Complex Systems ◽  
Language Evolution ◽  
Minimum Description Length ◽  
Evolution Of Language ◽  
Problem Space ◽  
Natural Languages ◽  
Look Up Table ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract For many adaptive complex systems information about the environment is not simply recorded in a look-up table, but is rather encoded in a theory, schema, or model, which compresses information. The grammar of a language can be viewed as such a schema or theory. In a prior study [Teal et al., 1999] we proposed several conjectures about the learning and evolution of language that should follow from these observations: (C1) compression aids in generalization; (C2) compression occurs more easily in a “smooth”, as opposed to a “rugged”, problem space; and (C3) constraints from compression make it likely that natural languages evolve towards smooth string spaces. This previous work found general, if not complete support for these three conjectures. Here we build on that study to clarify the relationship between Minimum Description Length (MDL) and error in our model and examine evolution of certain languages in more detail. Our results suggest a fourth conjecture: that all else being equal, (C4) more complex languages change more rapidly during evolution.

Linguists play catchup with evolution

2001 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 581-591 ◽  
Author(s):  
DEREK BICKERTON
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Computational Linguistics ◽  
Language Evolution ◽  
Evolution Of Language ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
Language And Communication ◽  
Georgetown University ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Oxford University Press

Donald Loritz, How the brain evolved language. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Pp. 227.Lyle Jenkins, Biolinguistics : exploring the biology of language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Pp. xiii+264.In the course of reviewing recent books on the evolution of language and communication (Dunbar 1996, Hauser 1996, Deacon 1997) I have had occasion to note that relatively few writers on these topics know much about linguistics, and to wish that more of them did. I should have remembered the old adage that one shouldn't wish for things - one might get them.For more than a century, linguists honored the Linguistic Society of Paris's ban on all discussion of language evolution; other disciplines went ahead with it regardless. Now that the centrality of language evolution to any study of our species is becoming apparent, linguists are desperately trying to play catchup, and the two volumes reviewed here both appeared in the last couple of years. Both authors are linguists, albeit hyphenated ones. Donald Loritz teaches computational linguistics at Georgetown University; his doctorate was in psycholinguistics. Lyle Jenkins works in the Biolinguistics Institute in Cambridge, MA; however, his doctorate was in unhyphenated linguistics. It would be difficult to find two authors whose ideas were more diametrically opposed.

scholarly journals The brain plus the cultural transmission mechanism determine the nature of language

2008 ◽  
Vol 31 (5) ◽  
pp. 533-534
Author(s):  
Kenny Smith ◽  
Simon Kirby ◽  
Andrew D. M. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Biological Evolution ◽  
Transmission Mechanism ◽  
Language Faculty ◽  
External Constraints ◽  
Target Article ◽  
The Brain

AbstractWe agree that language adapts to the brain, but we note that language also has to adapt to brain-external constraints, such as those arising from properties of the cultural transmission medium. The hypothesis that Christiansen & Chater (C&C) raise in the target article not only has profound consequences for our understanding of language, but also for our understanding of the biological evolution of the language faculty.

scholarly journals The origins of non-human primates' manual gestures

2012 ◽  
Vol 367 (1585) ◽  
pp. 118-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katja Liebal ◽  
Josep Call
Keyword(s):  
Language Evolution ◽  
Functional Asymmetry ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
Gestural Communication ◽  
Human Communication ◽  
Ongoing Research ◽  
Communicative Actions ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Brain

The increasing body of research into human and non-human primates' gestural communication reflects the interest in a comparative approach to human communication, particularly possible scenarios of language evolution. One of the central challenges of this field of research is to identify appropriate criteria to differentiate a gesture from other non-communicative actions. After an introduction to the criteria currently used to define non-human primates' gestures and an overview of ongoing research, we discuss different pathways of how manual actions are transformed into manual gestures in both phylogeny and ontogeny. Currently, the relationship between actions and gestures is not only investigated on a behavioural, but also on a neural level. Here, we focus on recent evidence concerning the differential laterality of manual actions and gestures in apes in the framework of a functional asymmetry of the brain for both hand use and language.

scholarly journals Animism and Language Evolution

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eldar T. Hasanov
Keyword(s):  
Communication Systems ◽  
Language Evolution ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Evolution Of Language ◽  
Early Humans ◽  
Language Communication ◽  
Ritual Speech ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Evolutionarily Stable ◽  
Do So

The exact mechanism of the evolution of language remains unknown. One of the central problems in this field is the issue of reliability and deceit that can be characterized in terms of honest signaling theory. Communication systems become vulnerable to dishonesty and deceit when there are conflicting interests between the signaler and receiver. The handicap principle explains how evolution can prevent animals from deceiving each other even if they have a strong incentive to do so. It suggests that the signals must be costly in order to provide accurate and reliable communication between animals. Language-like communication systems, being inherently vulnerable to deception, could only evolve and become evolutionarily stable if they had some mechanisms that can make the communication hard to fake and trustworthy. One of the theories that try to solve the problem of reliability and deception is the ritual/speech coevolution hypothesis. According to this theory, hard-to-fake rituals evolved concurrently with language - by reinforcing trust and solidarity among early humans and preventing deceitful and manipulative behavior within the group. One of the drawbacks of this hypothesis is that the relationship between ritual and speech is too indirect. Rituals could not have a real-time effect on every instance of speech and encompass all aspects of everyday language communication. Therefore they are not efficient enough to provide instant verification mechanisms to guarantee honest communication. It is more likely that the animistic nature of language itself, rather than ritual, was the handicap-like cost that helped to ensure the reliability of language during its origin. The belief in the parallel dimension of animistic spirits emerged concurrently with language as a hard-to-fake attestation mechanism that ensured inviolability of one's speech. The notion that animism emerged because of early behaviorally modern humans’ incoherent and flawed observations about the natural world is unlikely, because it implies a very improbable scenario, that there had been a more coherent and rational pre-animistic period which later degraded to animistic one.

COMPLEX SYSTEMS IN LANGUAGE EVOLUTION: THE CULTURAL EMERGENCE OF COMPOSITIONAL STRUCTURE

2003 ◽  
Vol 06 (04) ◽  
pp. 537-558 ◽  
Author(s):  
KENNY SMITH ◽  
HENRY BRIGHTON ◽  
SIMON KIRBY
Keyword(s):  
Language Learners ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Complex Adaptive Systems ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Adaptive Systems ◽  
Language Evolution ◽  
Biological Evolution ◽  
Compositional Structure ◽  
Complex Adaptive ◽  
Iterated Learning

Language arises from the interaction of three complex adaptive systems — biological evolution, learning, and culture. We focus here on cultural evolution, and present an Iterated Learning Model of the emergence of compositionality, a fundamental structural property of language. Our main result is to show that the poverty of the stimulus available to language learners leads to a pressure for linguistic structure. When there is a bottleneck on cultural transmission, only a language which is generalizable from sparse input data is stable. Language itself evolves on a cultural time-scale, and compositionality is language's adaptation to stimulus poverty.

The limbic language/language axis theory of speech

2000 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 439-440
Author(s):  
R. Joseph
Keyword(s):  
Language Evolution ◽  
Evolution Of Language ◽  
Evolution And Development ◽  
Target Article

In a recent BBS target article, MacNeilage (1998) presents what he claims to be the only theory that can account for the evolution of language. However, major portions of his target article basically repeat and in many respects are identical to the theories of language evolution and development first proposed and detailed by the present commentator.

Dynamic systems and the evolution of language

2006 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 286-287
Author(s):  
Lakshmi J. Gogate
Keyword(s):  
Systems Theory ◽  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Dynamic Systems ◽  
Language Evolution ◽  
Ontogenetic Development ◽  
Dynamic Systems Theory ◽  
Evolution Of Language ◽  
Target Article

Locke & Bogin (L&B) suggest that theoretical principles of ontogenetic development apply to language evolution. If this is the case, then evolutionary theory should utilize epigenetic theories of development to theorize, model, and elucidate the evolution of language wherever possible. In this commentary, I evoke principles of dynamic systems theory to evaluate the evolutionary phenomena presented in the target article.

Evolution of Language

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angela D. Friederici ◽  
Noam Chomsky
Keyword(s):  
Language Evolution ◽  
Hierarchical Structures ◽  
Evolution Of Language ◽  
Fiber Tracts ◽  
Primate Brain ◽  
Species Comparisons ◽  
The Difference ◽  
White Matter Fiber Tracts ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Human Primate

The past and current views of language evolution all center around a crucial question: What led to the human faculty of language and can it be explained by continuity of phylogenesis from non-human to human primates? The view that is presented here holds that the difference between human and non-human primates lies in the structure of their brains, particularly in the way the relevant brain areas are connected by white matter fiber tracts. During the evolution of language two crucial abilities had to evolve: these are first, sensory-motor learning, and second, the ability to process hierarchical structures. Across-species comparisons between the human and non-human primate brain reveal cytoarchitectonic and connectivity differences. Although still under discussion, the available paleoanthropological findings suggest a reorganization of the brain during phylogeny, and a possible rewiring which, due to the prolonged ontogeny in humans, is shaped by environmental input.

The “locality assumption”: Lessons from history and neuroscience?

1997 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 518-519 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan K. Foster
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Functional Organization ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Specific Reference ◽  
Cognitive Neuropsychology ◽  
Target Article ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Brain

This commentary seeks to place Farah's (1994) arguments in the historical context of ideas about mind-brain relationships. It further seeks to draw a conceptual parallel between the issues considered by Farah in her target article and questions which have concerned neuroscientists since the nineteenth century regarding the functional organization of the brain. Specific reference is made to the relationship between use of the concept of “locality” in cognitive neuropsychology and use of the concept of “localization” in neuroscience.

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