Language as an evolutionary system

Physics of Life Reviews

Volumn 2, Issue 3, 2005, Pages 177-226

  Brighton, Henry ^a,b   Smith, Kenny ^a   Kirby, Simon ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH   (United Kingdom)

^b MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR HUMAN DEVELOPMENT   (Germany)

Author keywords

Adaptation; Artificial life; Culture; Evolution; Language; Replication

Indexed keywords

EID: 24344508146     PISSN: 15710645     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1016/j.plrev.2005.06.001     Document Type: Review

References (100)

1. H. Andersen Abductive and deductive change Language 40 1973 765-793
2. R. Aunger editor. Darwinizing culture: The status of memetics as a science 2000 Oxford Univ. Press Oxford
3. C.L. Baker Introduction to generative-transformational syntax 1978 Prentice-Hall Englewood Cliffs, NJ
4. J. The negotiation and acquisition of recursive grammars as a result of competition among exemplars In: E. Briscoe editor. Linguistic evolution through language acquisition: Formal and computational models 2002 Cambridge Univ. Press Cambridge 111-172
5. J. Berko The child's learning of English morphology Word 14 1958 150-177
6. P. Bloom How children learn the meanings of words 2000 MIT Press Cambridge, MA
7. R. Boyd P.J. Richerson Culture and the evolutionary process 1985 Univ. of Chicago Press Chicago, IL
8. Brighton H. editor. Experiments in iterated instance-based learning. Tech. Rep., Language Evolution and Computation Research Unit; 2000
9. H. Brighton Compositional syntax from cultural transmission Artificial Life 8 1 2002 25-54
10. Brighton H. editor. Simplicity as a driving force in linguistic evolution. Ph.D. Thesis, The University of Edinburgh; March 2003
11. Brighton H. Linguistic evolution and induction by minimum description length. In preparation
12. H. Brighton S. Kirby The survival of the smallest: Stability conditions for the cultural evolution of compositional language In: J. Kelemen P. Sosík editors. Advances in artificial life: Proceedings of the 6th European conference on artificial life 2001 Springer-Verlag Berlin 592-601
13. Brighton H, Kirby S. Understanding linguistic evolution by visualizing the emergence of topographic mappings. Artificial Life. In press
14. H. Brighton S. Kirby K. Smith Cultural selection for learnability: Three principles underlying the view that language adapts to be learnable In: M. Tallerman editor. Language origins: Perspectives on evolution 2005 Oxford Univ. Press Oxford
15. E. Briscoe editor. Linguistic evolution through language acquisition: Formal and computational models 2002 Cambridge Univ. Press Cambridge
16. L.L. Cavalli-Sforza M.W. Feldman Cultural transmission and evolution: A quantitative approach 1981 Princeton Univ. Press Princeton, NJ
17. N. Chater The search for simplicity: A fundamental cognitive principle Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology A 52 1999 273-302
18. N. Chater P.M.B. Vitányi Simplicity: A unifying principle in cognitive science Trends in Cognitive Sciences 7 1 2003 19-22
19. Chater N, Vitányi PMB. A simplicity principle for language acquisition: Re-evaluating what can be learned from positive evidence; 2004 [manuscript under review]
20. D. Cheney R. Seyfarth How monkeys see the world: Inside the mind of another species 1990 Univ. of Chicago Press Chicago, IL
21. N. Chomsky Aspects of the theory of syntax 1965 MIT Press Cambridge, MA
22. N. Chomsky Recent contributions to the theory of innate ideas Synthese 17 1967 2-11
23. N. Chomsky In: A. Belletti L. Rizzi editors. On nature and language 2002 Cambridge Univ. Press Cambridge
24. Christiansen M. Infinite languages, finite minds: Connectionism, learning and linguistic structure. Ph.D. Thesis, University of Edinburgh; 1994
25. M. Christiansen S. Kirby Language evolution 2003 Oxford Univ. Press Oxford
26. M.H. Christiansen S. Kirby Language evolution: Consensus and controversies Trends in Cognitive Sciences 7 7 2003 300-307
27. R. Clark I. Roberts A computational model of language learnability and language change Linguistic Inquiry 24 2 1993 299-345
28. B. Comrie Language universals and linguistic typology 2nd ed. 1989 Blackwell Oxford
29. F. Cowie What's within? Nativism reconsidered 1999 Oxford Univ. Press Oxford
30. S. Crain Language acquisition in the absence of experience Behavioral and Brain Sciences 14 1991
31. W. Croft Typology and universals 1990 Cambridge Univ. Press Cambridge
32. P.W. Culicover Syntactic nuts: Hard cases, syntactic theory, and language acquisition 1999 Oxford Univ. Press Oxford
33. R. Dawkins The selfish gene 1989 Cambridge Univ. Press Cambridge
34. T. Deacon The symbolic species 1997 Penguin London
35. M.J. Doherty Children's difficulty in learning homonyms Journal of Child Language 31 1 2004 203-214
36. W.H. Durham Coevolution: Genes, culture and human diversity 1991 Stanford Univ. Press Stanford, CA
37. J.E. Elman E.A. Bates M.H. Johnson A. Karmiloff-Smith D. Parisi K. Plunkett editors. Rethinking innateness: A connectionist perspective on development 1996 MIT Press Cambridge, MA
38. J.L. Elman Generalization from sparse input Proceedings of the 38th annual meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society 2003 Chicago Linguistic Society
39. P. Feyerabend Against method 1978 Verso London
40. P. Glendinning Stability, instability, and chaos: An introduction to the theory of nonlinear differential equations 1994 Cambridge Univ. Press Cambridge
41. P. Grünwald Model selection based on minimum description length Journal of Mathematical Psychology 44 2000 133-152
42. M. Hare J.L. Elman Learning and morphological change Cognition 56 1 1995 61-98
43. J.E. Hopcroft J.D. Ullman Introduction to automata theory, languages, and computation 1979 Addison-Wesley Reading, MA
44. J.R. Hurford Biological evolution of the Saussurean sign as a component of the language acquisition device Lingua 77 2 1989 187-222
45. J.R. Hurford Nativist and functional explanations in language acquisition In: I.M. Roca editor. Logical issues in language acquisition 1990 Foris Dordrecht 85-136
46. R. Jackendoff Foundations of language: Brain, meaning, grammar, evolution 2002 Oxford Univ. Press Oxford
47. J. Kagan The second year 1981 Harvard Univ. Press Cambridge, MA
48. J.P. Kimball The formal theory of grammar 1973 Prentice-Hall Englewood Cliffs, NJ
49. S. Kirby Function, selection and innateness: The emergence of language universals 1999 Oxford Univ. Press Oxford
50. S. Kirby Syntax without natural selection: How compositionality emerges from vocabulary in a population of learners In: C. Knight M. Studdert-Kennedy J. Hurford (Eds.) The evolutionary emergence of language: Social function and the origins of linguistic form 2000 Cambridge Univ. Press Cambridge 303-323
51. S. Kirby Spontaneous evolution of linguistic structure: An iterated learning model of the emergence of regularity and irregularity IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation 5 2 2001 102-110
52. S. Kirby Learning, bottlenecks and the evolution of recursive syntax In: E. Briscoe editor. Linguistic evolution through language acquisition: Formal and computational models 2002 Cambridge Univ. Press Cambridge 173-203
53. M. Krifka Compositionality In: R.A. Wilson F. Keil editors. The MIT encyclopaedia of the cognitive sciences 2001 MIT Press Cambridge, MA
54. R.B. LePage A. Tabouret-Keller Acts of identity 1985 Cambridge Univ. Press Cambridge
55. M. Li P. Vitányi An introduction to Kolmogorov complexity and its applications 1997 Springer-Verlag New York
56. J. Lidz S. Waxman Reaffirming the poverty of the stimulus argument: A reply to the replies Cognition 93 2004 157-165
57. J. Lidz S. Waxman J. Freedman What infants know about syntax but couldn't have learned: Evidence for syntactic structure at 18-months Cognition 89 2003 65-73
58. D. Lightfoot The development of language: Acquisition, change, and evolution 1999 Blackwell Oxford
59. W. Mańczak Laws of analogy In: J. Fisiak editor. Historical morphology 1980 Mouton The Hague 283-288
60. E.M. Markman Categorization and naming in children: Problems of induction 1989 MIT Press Cambridge, MA
61. E.M. Markman Constraints on word learning: Speculations about their nature, origins, and domain specificity In: M. Gunnar M. Maratsos editors. Modularity and constraints in language and cognition: The Minnesota symposium on child psychology vol. 25 1992 Erlbaum Hillsdale, NJ 59-101
62. E.M. Markman G.F. Wachtel Children's use of mutual exclusivity to constrain the meaning of words Cognitive Psychology 20 1988 121-157
63. J. Maynard Smith E. Szathmáry The major transitions in evolution 1995 Oxford Univ. Press Oxford
64. J. Maynard Smith E. Szathmáry The origins of life: From the birth of life to the origins of language 1999 Oxford Univ. Press Oxford
65. M.M. Mazzocco Children's interpretations of homonyms: A developmental study Journal of Child Language 24 2 1997 441-467
66. A. Mesoudi A. Whiten K.N. Laland Is human cultural evolution Darwinian? Evidence reviewed from the perspective of the origin of species Evolution 58 1 2004 1-11
67. F.J. Newmeyer Uniformitarian assumptions and language evolution research In: A. Wray editor. The transition to language 2002 Oxford Univ. Press Oxford
68. P. Niyogi R.C. Berwick Evolutionary consequences of language learning Linguistics and Philosophy 20 1997 697-719
69. M.A. Nowak N.L. Komarova Towards an evolutionary theory of language Trends in Cognitive Sciences 5 7 2001 288-295
70. W. O'Grady M. Dobrovolsky F. Katamba Contemporary linguistics: An introduction 3rd ed. 1996 Longman London
71. M. Oliphant The learning barrier: Moving from innate to learned systems of communication Adaptive Behavior 7 3/4 1999 371-384
72. D. Osherton M. Stob S. Weinstein Systems that learn 1986 MIT Press Cambridge, MA
73. S. Pinker P. Bloom Natural language and natural selection Behavioral and Brain Sciences 13 4 1990 707-784
74. M.A. Pitt I.J. Myung S. Zhang Toward a method of selecting among computational models of cognition Psychological Review 109 3 2002 472-491
75. G.K. Pullum Learnability, hyperlearning, and the poverty of the stimulus In: J. Johnson M.L. Juge J.L. Moxley editors. Proceeding of the 22nd annual meeting: General session and parasession on the role of learnability in grammatical theory 1996 Berkeley Linguistic Society Berkeley, CA 498-513
76. G.K. Pullum B.C. Scholz Empirical assessment of stimulus poverty arguments The Linguistic Review 19 1-2 2002 9-50
77. J. Rissanen Modeling by shortest data description Automatica 14 1978 465-471
78. J. Rissanen Stochastic complexity in learning Journal of Computer and System Sciences 55 1997 89-95
79. F. Rosenblatt The perceptron: A probabilistic model for information storage and organization in the brain Psychological Review 65 1958 368-408
80. D.I. Slobin Cognitive prerequisites for the development of grammar In: C.A. Freguson D.I. Slobin editors. Studies of child language development 1973 Holt, Rinehart and Winston New York, NY
81. D.I. Slobin Language change in childhood and history In: J. Macnamara editor. Language learning and thought 1977 Academic Press London 185-221
82. D.I. Slobin Crosslinguistic evidence for the language-making capacity In: D.I. Slobin editor. The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition vol. 2 1985 Lawrence Earlbaum Associates Hillsdale 1157-1249
83. A.D.M. Smith Intelligent meaning creation in a clumpy world helps communication Artificial Life 9 2 2003 175-190
84. K. Smith The cultural evolution of communication in a population of neural networks Connection Science 14 1 2002 65-84
85. Smith K. Compositionality from culture: The role of environment structure and learning bias. Tech. Rep., Language Evolution and Computation Research Unit, University of Edinburgh; 2003
86. K. Smith The evolution of vocabulary Journal of Theoretical Biology 228 1 2004 127-142
87. K. Smith H. Brighton S. Kirby Complex systems in language evolution: The cultural emergence of compositional structure Advances in Complex Systems 6 4 2003 537-558
88. K. Smith J.R. Hurford Language evolution in populations: Extending the iterated learning model In: W. Banzhaf T. Christaller P. Dittrich J.T. Kim J. Ziegler editors. Advances in artificial life (Proceedings of the 7th European conference on artificial life) 2003 Springer-Verlag Berlin 507-516
89. K. Smith S. Kirby H. Brighton Iterated learning: A framework for the emergence of language Artificial Life 9 4 2003 371-386
90. L. Steels Constructing and sharing perceptual distinctions In: M. van Someren G. Widmer editors. Proceedings of the European conference on machine learning ECML '97 1997 Springer-Verlag Berlin 4-13
91. T.K. Teal C.E. Taylor Effects of compression on language evolution Artificial Life 6 2 2000 129-143
92. M. Tomasello The cultural origins of human cognition 1999 Harvard Univ. Press Harvard
93. R.L. Trask Historical linguistics 1996 Arnold London
94. P. Trudgill Sex, covert prestige, and linguistic change in the urban British English of Norwich Language in Society 1 1972 179-196
95. J. Uriagereka Rhyme and reason: An introduction to minimalist syntax 1998 MIT Press Cambridge, MA
96. K. von Frisch Decoding the language of the bee Science 185 1974 663-668
97. L. Wagner Defending nativism in language acquisition Trends in Cognitive Sciences 6 7 2001 283-284
98. K. Wexler On the argument from the poverty of the stimulus In: A. Kasher editor. The Chomskyan turn 1991 Blackwell Oxford
99. J.G. Wolff Language acquisition, data compression, and generalization Language and Communication 2 1 1982 57-89
100. W. Zadrozny From compositional to systematic semantics Linguistics and Philosophy 17 1994 329-342