Models of Language Evolution

Abstract

Models of Language Evolution reviews the models that provide evidence for the role of cultural evolution in the emergence of linguistic structure. This chapter discusses the levels of linguistic structure, and why the emergence of structure in language is a central question for evolutionary linguistics. It reviews the computational and experimental models which demonstrate that pressures operating during language learning and language use can give rise to the appearance of design in language, through the repeated cycle of learning and use that characterise language transmission. Finally, it discusses how learning biases at the individual level lead to the presence of typological universals: systematic patterns in how the world’s languages tend to be structured.