Language and the Free-Rider Problem: An Experimental Paradigm

Biological Theory

Volumn 3, Issue 2, 2008, Pages 174-183

  Roberts, Gareth ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

cultural evolution; experimental; free rider problem; historical linguistics; language change; language evolution; sociolinguistics

Indexed keywords

EID: 77949290196     PISSN: 15555542     EISSN: 15555550     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1162/biot.2008.3.2.174     Document Type: Article

References (31)

1. Axelrod R (1990) The Evolution of Co-operation. London: Penguin Books.
2. Boyd R, Gintis H, Bowles S, Richerson PJ, eds (2003) The evolution of altruistic punishment. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 100: 3532–3535.
3. Christiansen MH, Chater N (2007) Language as shaped by the brain. http://www.isrl.uiuc.edu/∼amag/langev/paper/christiansen07languageBrain.html
4. Cornish H (2006) Iterated learning with human subjects: An empirical framework for the emergence and cultural transmission of language. Unpublished master’s thesis, University of Edinburgh, UK. http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk/lec/LEC/Research.html
5. Croft W (2000) Explaining Language Change: An Evolutionary Approach. Harlow, UK: Longman.
6. Cruttenden A (1986) Intonation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
7. Deacon TW (1997/1998) The Symbolic Species: The Co-evolution of Language and the Brain. New York: Norton.
8. Dediu D, Ladd DR (2007) Linguistic tone is related to the population frequency of the adaptive haplogroups of two brain size genes, ASPM and Microcephalin. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 104: 10944–10949. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0610848104
9. Dunbar RIM (1996) Grooming, Gossip and the Evolution of Language. London: Faber and Faber.
10. Enquist M, Leimar O (1993) The evolution of cooperation in mobile organisms. Animal Behaviour 45: 747–757. DOI: 10.1006/anbe.1993.1089
11. Evans B (2004) The role of social network in the acquisition of local dialect norms by Appalachian immigrants in Ypsilanti, Michigan. Language Variation and Change 16: 153–167. DOI: 10.1017/S0954394504162042
12. Hagen LK (2008) The bilingual brain: Human evolution and second language acquisition. Evolutionary Psychology 6: 43–63. DOI: 10.1556/JEP.2008.1004
13. Harrington J (2006) An acoustic analysis of ‘happy tensing’ in the Queen’s Christmas broadcasts. Journal of Phonetics 34: 439–457. DOI: 10.1016/j.wocn.2005.08.001
14. Kirby S (2000) Syntax without natural selection: How compositionality emerges from vocabulary in a population of learners. In: The Evolutionary Emergence of Language: Social Function and the Origins of Linguistic Form (Knight C, ed), 303–323. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511606441.019
15. Kirby S, Hurford J (2002) The emergence of linguistic structure: An overview of the iterated learning model. In: Simulating the Evolution of Language (Cangelosi A, Parisi D, eds), 121–148. London: Springer. DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4471-0663-0_6
16. Labov W (1963) The social motivation of a sound change. Word 19: 273–309.
17. Labov W (1990) The intersection of sex and social class in the course of linguistic change. Language Variation and Change 2: 205–254. DOI: 10.1017/S0954394500000338
18. Labov W (2001) Principles of Linguistic Change, Vol. 2: Social Factors. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
19. Lieberman E, Michel J, Jackson J, Tang T, Nowak MA (2007) Quantifying the evolutionary dynamics of language. Nature 449: 713–716. DOI: 10.1038/nature06137
20. Livingstone D (2002) The evolution of dialect diversity. In: Simulating the Evolution of Language (Cangelosi A, Parisi D, eds), 99–117. London: Springer. DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4471-0663-0_5
21. Livingstone D, Fyfe C (1999) Modelling the evolution of linguistic diversity. In: Advances in Artificial Life. Proceedings of the 5th European Conference in Artificial Life, ECAL’ 99, Lausanne, Switzerland (Floreano D, Nicoud J-D, Mondada F, eds), 704–708. London: Springer. DOI: 10.1007/3-540-48304-7_92
22. Nettle D (1999) Linguistic Diversity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
23. Nettle D, Dunbar RIM (1997) Social markers and the evolution of cooperative exchange. Current Anthropology 38: 93–99. DOI: 10.1086/204588
24. Pagel M, Atkinson QD, Meade A (2007) Frequency of word-use predicts rates of lexical evolution throughout Indo-European history. Nature 449: 717–721. DOI: 10.1038/nature06176
25. Quinn M (2001) Evolving communication without dedicated communication channels. In: Advances in Artificial Life. 6th European Conference on Artificial Life, ECAL 2001 (Kelemen J, Sosik P, eds), 357–366. London: Springer. DOI: 10.1007/3-540-44811-X_38
26. Steels L (2000) Language as a complex adaptive system. In: Proceedings of PPSN VI (Schoenauer M, ed), 17–26. Berlin: Springer.
27. Tooby J, Cosmides L (1990) On the universality and the uniqueness of the individual: The role of genetics and personality. Journal of Personality 27: 17–67. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-6494.1990.tb00907.x
28. Trudgill P (1972) Sex, covert prestige and linguistic change in the urban British English of Norwich. Language in Society 1: 179–196. DOI: 10.1017/S0047404500000488
29. Weinreich U, Labov W, Herzog M (1968) Empirical foundations for a theory of language change. In: Directions for Historical Linguistics: A Symposium (Lehmann WP, ed), 95–195. Austin: University of Texas Press.
30. Worden RP (1995) A speed limit for evolution. Journal of Theoretical Biology 176: 127–152. DOI: 10.1006/jtbi.1995.0183
31. Wray A, Grace GW (2007) The consequences of talking to strangers: Evolutionary corollaries of influences on linguistic form. Lingua 117: 543–578. DOI: 10.1016/j.lingua.2005.05.005