Cultural evolution: implications for understanding the human language faculty and its evolution

Smith, Kenny; Kirby, Simon

doi:10.1098/rstb.2008.0145

Cited by 129 publications

(122 citation statements)

References 61 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

117

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…possible, however, that culturally-mediated linguistic change may shield the relevant learning and processing mechanisms from adapting to selective pressures even from functional properties of language (55).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Restrictions on biological adaptation in language evolution

Chater

Reali²,

Christiansen³

2009

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

129

157

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Language acquisition and processing are governed by genetic constraints. A crucial unresolved question is how far these genetic constraints have coevolved with language, perhaps resulting in a highly specialized and species-specific language ''module,'' and how much language acquisition and processing redeploy preexisting cognitive machinery. In the present work, we explored the circumstances under which genes encoding language-specific properties could have coevolved with language itself. We present a theoretical model, implemented in computer simulations, of key aspects of the interaction of genes and language. Our results show that genes for language could have coevolved only with highly stable aspects of the linguistic environment; a rapidly changing linguistic environment does not provide a stable target for natural selection. Thus, a biological endowment could not coevolve with properties of language that began as learned cultural conventions, because cultural conventions change much more rapidly than genes. We argue that this rules out the possibility that arbitrary properties of language, including abstract syntactic principles governing phrase structure, case marking, and agreement, have been built into a ''language module'' by natural selection. The genetic basis of human language acquisition and processing did not coevolve with language, but primarily predates the emergence of language. As suggested by Darwin, the fit between language and its underlying mechanisms arose because language has evolved to fit the human brain, rather than the reverse.Baldwin effect ͉ coevolution ͉ cultural evolution ͉ language acquisition

show abstract

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Restrictions on biological adaptation in language evolution

Chater

Reali²,

Christiansen³

2009

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

129

157

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This study of cultural change has advanced rapidly in recent years, part of a more general scientific focus on cultural evolution (Boyd & Richerson, 1996;Fitch, 2011c;Laland et al, 2010;Mesoudi et al, 2004). This research has recently taken a strong empirical turn both in humans (Kirby et al, 2008;Morgan et al, 2015;Smith & Kirby, 2008) and animals (Fehér, 2016;Fehér, Wang, Saar, Mitra, & Tchernichovski, 2009;Whiten et al, 1999). Because the term Blanguage evolution^can be interpreted either in terms of biological evolution of the language faculty or the cultural evolution of specific languages, Jim Hurford introduced the useful term Bglossogeny^to denote the latter specifically (Hurford, 1990).…”

Section: Cultural Aspects Of Language Evolutionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Empirical approaches to the study of language evolution

2017

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The study of language evolution, and human cognitive evolution more generally, has often been ridiculed as unscientific, but in fact it differs little from many other disciplines that investigate past events, such as geology or cosmology. Well-crafted models of language evolution make numerous testable hypotheses, and if the principles of strong inference (simultaneous testing of multiple plausible hypotheses) are adopted, there is an increasing amount of relevant data allowing empirical evaluation of such models. The articles in this special issue provide a concise overview of current models of language evolution, emphasizing the testable predictions that they make, along with overviews of the many sources of data available to test them (emphasizing comparative, neural, and genetic data). The key challenge facing the study of language evolution is not a lack of data, but rather a weak commitment to hypothesistesting approaches and strong inference, exacerbated by the broad and highly interdisciplinary nature of the relevant data. This introduction offers an overview of the field, and a summary of what needed to evolve to provide our species with language-ready brains. It then briefly discusses different contemporary models of language evolution, followed by an overview of different sources of data to test these models. I conclude with my own multistage model of how different components of language could have evolved.

show abstract

“…in prosody and syntax), the resulting isomorphism can increase the precision of decoding [1,37]; on the other hand, if such cognitive biases are shared by a population, then this would increase the likelihood of the emergence of a conventionalized system to transmit information [50,51]. Recent work has shown that the presence of recursive rules as Bayesian priors may enhance the acquisition of syntactic rules [52].…”

Section: What Is Recursion Good For?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Both these facts could be explained by human cognitive biases [31,35,41,51,60,61], with origins in non-linguistic domains, provided that they would be flexible enough to be useful in a fast-changing cultural environment [50]. The ability (or predisposition) to represent hierarchical structures as containing self-similarity could be one of these biases.…”

Section: Recursion and Syntaxmentioning

confidence: 99%

Distinctive signatures of recursion

Martins

2012

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Although recursion has been hypothesized to be a necessary capacity for the evolution of language, the multiplicity of definitions being used has undermined the broader interpretation of empirical results. I propose that only a definition focused on representational abilities allows the prediction of specific behavioural traits that enable us to distinguish recursion from non-recursive iteration and from hierarchical embedding: only subjects able to represent recursion, i.e. to represent different hierarchical dependencies (related by parenthood) with the same set of rules, are able to generalize and produce new levels of embedding beyond those specified a priori (in the algorithm or in the input). The ability to use such representations may be advantageous in several domains: action sequencing, problem-solving, spatial navigation, social navigation and for the emergence of conventionalized communication systems. The ability to represent contiguous hierarchical levels with the same rules may lead subjects to expect unknown levels and constituents to behave similarly, and this prior knowledge may bias learning positively. Finally, a new paradigm to test for recursion is presented. Preliminary results suggest that the ability to represent recursion in the spatial domain recruits both visual and verbal resources. Implications regarding language evolution are discussed.

show abstract

Cultural evolution: implications for understanding the human language faculty and its evolution

Cited by 129 publications

References 61 publications

Restrictions on biological adaptation in language evolution

Restrictions on biological adaptation in language evolution

Empirical approaches to the study of language evolution

Distinctive signatures of recursion

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About