scholarly journals Language Design and Communicative Competence: The Minimalist Perspective

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elliot Murphy
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Communicative Competence ◽  
Language Evolution ◽  
Minimalist Program ◽  
Language Design ◽  
Human Language ◽  
Computational System ◽  
Linguistic Communication ◽  
System P

In the Minimalist Program, the place of linguistic communication in language evolution and design is clear: It is assumed to be secondary to internalisation. I will defend this position against its critics, and maintain that natural selection played a more crucial role in selecting features of externalization and communication than in developing the computational system of language, following some core insights of minimalism. Alongside this computational system, human language exhibits ostensive-inferential communication via open-ended combinatorial productivity, and I will explore how this system is compatible with – and does not preclude – a minimalist model of the language system.

scholarly journals Construction grammar for monkeys?

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Pleyer ◽  
Stefan Hartmann
Keyword(s):  
Communication Systems ◽  
Animal Communication ◽  
Language Evolution ◽  
Construction Grammar ◽  
Alarm Calls ◽  
Human Language ◽  
Communication Research ◽  
Evolution Of Language ◽  
Linguistic Communication ◽  
Key Issues

Abstract In recent years, multiple researchers working on the evolution of language have put forward the idea that the theoretical framework of usage-based approaches and Construction Grammar is highly suitable for modelling the emergence of human language from pre-linguistic or proto-linguistic communication systems. This also raises the question of whether usage-based and constructionist approaches can be integrated with the analysis of animal communication systems. In this paper, we review possible avenues where usage-based, constructionist approaches can make contact with animal communication research, which in turn also has implications for theories of language evolution. To this end, we first give an overview of key assumptions of usage-based and constructionist approaches before reviewing some key issues in animal communication research through the lens of usage-based, constructionist approaches. Specifically, we will discuss how research on alarm calls, gestural communication and symbol-trained animals can be brought into contact with usage-based, constructionist theorizing. We argue that a constructionist view of animal communication can yield new perspectives on its relation to human language, which in turn has important implications regarding the evolution of language. Importantly, this theoretical approach also generates hypotheses that have the potential of complementing and extending results from the more formalist approaches that often underlie current animal communication research.

scholarly journals Construction Grammar for Monkeys? Animal communication and its implications for language evolution in the light of usage-based linguistic theory

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Pleyer ◽  
Stefan Hartmann
Keyword(s):  
Communication Systems ◽  
Animal Communication ◽  
Language Evolution ◽  
Construction Grammar ◽  
Alarm Calls ◽  
Human Language ◽  
Communication Research ◽  
Evolution Of Language ◽  
Linguistic Communication ◽  
Key Issues

In recent years, multiple researchers working on the evolution of language have put forward the idea that the theoretical framework of usage-based approaches and Construction Grammar is highly suitable for modelling the emergence of human language from pre-linguistic or proto-linguistic communication systems. This also raises the question of whether usage-based and constructionist approaches can be integrated with the analysis of animal communication systems. In this paper, we review possible avenues where usage-based, constructionist approaches can make contact with animal communication research, which in turn also has implications for theories of language evolution. To this end, we first give an overview of key assumptions of usage-based and constructionist approaches before reviewing some key issues in animal communication research through the lens of usage-based, constructionist approaches. Specifically, we will discuss how research on alarm calls, gestural communication and symbol-trained animals can be brought into contact with usage-based, constructionist theorizing. We argue that a constructionist view of animal communication can yield new perspectives on its relation to human language, which in turn has important implications regarding the evolution of language. Importantly, this theoretical approach also generates hypotheses that have the potential of complementing and extending results from the more formalist approaches that often underlie current animal communication research.

Natural language and natural selection

1990 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 707-727 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Pinker ◽  
Paul Bloom
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Language Evolution ◽  
Selective Advantage ◽  
Human Language ◽  
Language Faculty ◽  
Serial Interface ◽  
Complex Design ◽  
Selection For ◽  
Propositional Structures ◽  
Alternative Processes

AbstractMany people have argued that the evolution of the human language faculty cannot be explained by Darwinian natural selection. Chomsky and Gould have suggested that language may have evolved as the by-product of selection for other abilities or as a consequence of as-yet unknown laws of growth and form. Others have argued that a biological specialization for grammar is incompatible with every tenet of Darwinian theory – that it shows no genetic variation, could not exist in any intermediate forms, confers no selective advantage, and would require more evolutionary time and genomic space than is available. We examine these arguments and show that they depend on inaccurate assumptions about biology or language or both. Evolutionary theory offers clear criteria for when a trait should be attributed to natural selection: complex design for some function, and the absence of alternative processes capable of explaining such complexity. Human language meets these criteria: Grammar is a complex mechanism tailored to the transmission of propositional structures through a serial interface. Autonomous and arbitrary grammatical phenomena have been offered as counterexamples to the position that language is an adaptation, but this reasoning is unsound: Communication protocols depend on arbitrary conventions that are adaptive as long as they are shared. Consequently, language acquisition in the child should systematically differ from language evolution in the species, and attempts to analogize them are misleading. Reviewing other arguments and data, we conclude that there is every reason to believe that a specialization for grammar evolved by a conventional neo-Darwinian process.

scholarly journals Evolutionary biology of language

2000 ◽  
Vol 355 (1403) ◽  
pp. 1615-1622 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin A. Nowak
Keyword(s):  
Game Theory ◽  
Natural Selection ◽  
Mathematical Models ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Evolutionary Dynamics ◽  
Animal Communication ◽  
Language Evolution ◽  
Human Language ◽  
Exchange Information ◽  
New Ideas

Language is the most important evolutionary invention of the last few million years. It was an adaptation that helped our species to exchange information, make plans, express new ideas and totally change the appearance of the planet. How human language evolved from animal communication is one of the most challenging questions for evolutionary biology. The aim of this paper is to outline the major principles that guided language evolution in terms of mathematical models of evolutionary dynamics and game theory. I will discuss how natural selection can lead to the emergence of arbitrary signs, the formation of words and syntactic communication.

No fear of George Kingsley Zipf

10.1558/37291 ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 242-263
Author(s):  
Stefano Rastelli ◽  
Kook-Hee Gil
Keyword(s):  
Minimalist Program ◽  
Classroom Research ◽  
Language Design ◽  
Efficient Computation ◽  
Generative Linguistics ◽  
The Third ◽  
Factor Effect ◽  
Language Classroom ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Insight Into

This paper offers a new insight into GenSLA classroom research in light of recent developments in the Minimalist Program (MP). Recent research in GenSLA has shown how generative linguistics and acquisition studies can inform the language classroom, mostly focusing on what linguistic aspects of target properties should be integrated as a part of the classroom input. Based on insights from Chomsky’s ‘three factors for language design’ – which bring together the Faculty of Language, input and general principles of economy and efficient computation (the third factor effect) for language development – we put forward a theoretical rationale for how classroom research can offer a unique environment to test the learnability in L2 through the statistical enhancement of the input to which learners are exposed.

Clash of signs: Putting bilingualism back into language evolution

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Samuel
Keyword(s):  
Language Evolution ◽  
Modern Human ◽  
Alarm Calls ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
Human Language ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Typically Developing Children ◽  
Modern Humans ◽  
The Real ◽  
Multiple Languages

Research and thinking into the cognitive aspects of language evolution has usually attempted to account for how the capacity for learning even one modern human language developed. Bilingualism has perhaps been thought of as something to think about only once the ‘real’ puzzle of monolingualism is solved, but this would assume in turn (and without evidence) that bilingualism evolved after monolingualism. All typically-developing children (and adults) are capable of learning multiple languages, and the majority of modern humans are at least bilingual. In this paper I ask whether by skipping bilingualism out of language evolution we have missed a trick. I propose that exposure to synonymous signs, such as food and alarm calls, are a necessary precondition for the abstracting away of sound from referent. In support of this possibility is evidence that modern day bilingual children are better at breaking this ‘word magic’ spell. More generally, language evolution should be viewed through the lens of bilingualism, as this is the end state we are attempting to explain.

scholarly journals The integration hypothesis of human language evolution and the nature of contemporary languages

2014 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shigeru Miyagawa ◽  
Shiro Ojima ◽  
Robert C. Berwick ◽  
Kazuo Okanoya
Keyword(s):  
Language Evolution ◽  
Human Language

scholarly journals Human language evolution: a view from theoretical linguistics on how syntax and the lexicon first came into being

Primates ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Haruka Fujita ◽  
Koji Fujita
Keyword(s):  
Language Evolution ◽  
Animal Cognition ◽  
Action Planning ◽  
Theoretical Background ◽  
Human Language ◽  
Motor Action ◽  
Cognitive Capacities ◽  
Gradual Evolution ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Evolutionary Continuity

AbstractHuman language is a multi-componential function comprising several sub-functions each of which may have evolved in other species independently of language. Among them, two sub-functions, or modules, have been claimed to be truly unique to the humans, namely hierarchical syntax (known as “Merge” in linguistics) and the “lexicon.” This kind of species-specificity stands as a hindrance to our natural understanding of human language evolution. Here we challenge this issue and advance our hypotheses on how human syntax and lexicon may have evolved from pre-existing cognitive capacities in our ancestors and other species including but not limited to nonhuman primates. Specifically, we argue that Merge evolved from motor action planning, and that the human lexicon with the distinction between lexical and functional categories evolved from its predecessors found in animal cognition through a process we call “disintegration.” We build our arguments on recent developments in generative grammar but crucially depart from some of its core ideas by borrowing insights from other relevant disciplines. Most importantly, we maintain that every sub-function of human language keeps evolutionary continuity with other species’ cognitive capacities and reject a saltational emergence of language in favor of its gradual evolution. By doing so, we aim to offer a firm theoretical background on which a promising scenario of language evolution can be constructed.

On Language Design

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Yang
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Language Evolution ◽  
Language Design ◽  
Domain Specific ◽  
Innate Knowledge ◽  
Knowledge Of Language

Summary. How the current study impacts traditional problems in linguistics, and how it leads to a simplification of the theory of UG and language learning, with a reduced role for domain-specific innate knowledge of language, leading to an arguably more plausible solution to the problem of language evolution.

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