Re: Evolution of Language

On Jul 25, 11:56 am, feedbackdroid <feedbackdr...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Jul 24, 7:14 pm, "J.A. Legris" <jaleg...@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:



I'm getting excited! For a nice review of what's going on in language
evo, have a look at Zuidema's 2005 Ph.D thesis at:http://staff.science.uva.nl/~jzuidema/thesis/zuidema05phdthesis-compa...

WARNING: 177 pages long! (7.2 Mbytes)

Sample (pp. 3-4 ):
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1.2 How to Study the Evolution of Language

Language evolution is of course not the only field where it is
difficult to find empirical evidence: in cos-
mology, general relativity, paleontology, origins of life and many
other fields researchers have struggled
to find ways to test the coherence of their theories, and to test the
sometimes very indirect predictions that
follow from them. The solution in these fields has not been to abandon
the interesting questions, but to
formalise the theories, and to work out testableconsequences, even if
it requires many intermediate steps.
For the evolution of language this requires the development of
complete and formal scenarios that explain
the evolution of the unique features of human language (which are
testable in modern humans) from a
plausible precursor state in the human lineage that is not unique in
nature (and hence, open to empirical
investigation through comparative research).

Hi Joe. Zuidema cites Lieberman's '84 book below, but you might be
interested in L's more recent work, Toward an Evolutionary Biology of
Language by Philip Lieberman, 2006. This is essentially the latest
word on the neurophysiology relevant to the topic. I realize cog.sci
wants to create "formal" theories, but I would surmise Lieberman would
say most such theories are based too heavily on assumption rather than
biological fact.

http://www.google.com/custom?q=lieberman+evolution+language

http://www.amazon.com/Toward-Evolutionary-Biology-Language-Lieberman/...


Hi 'Droid,

The sort of "formal theory" that has caught my attention is
evolutionary game theory. Specifically, Nowak and colleagues'
simulations have shown that the assembly of strings of meaningless
elements into words (as in phonology) is likely to evolve when there
is a large number of potential messages. At the level of words (where
the elements are meaningful) syntax tends to evolve in sufficiently
complex worlds that exhibit combinatorial structure, e.g. instead of
requiring n x m words to describe n subjects each capable of
performing m actions, only n nouns and m verbs are required - the
resulting grammar comes to represent the structure of the world.

See:
http://www.ped.fas.harvard.edu/people/faculty/publications_nowak/TCS01.pdf

http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/96/14/8028.pdf

I've found both of Lieberman's books you mentioned, and I'll get back
to you.

--
Joe

.

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