What Are the Unique Design Features of Language? Formal Tools for Comparative Claims

What are the “design features” of human language that need to be explained? Starting from R. Jackendoff’s scenario for the evolution of language, we argue that it is the transitions between stages that pose the crucial challenges for accounts of the evolution of language. We review a number of formalisms for conceptualizations, sound, and the mapping between them, and describe and evaluate the differences between each of Jackendoff’s stages in terms of these formalisms. We conclude from this discussion that the transitions to combinatorial phonology, compositional semantics and hierarchical phrase structure can be formally characterized. Modeling these transitions is a major challenge for language evolution research.

[1]  W. T. Peake,et al.  Experiments in Hearing , 1963 .

[2]  Pierre-Yves Oudeyer,et al.  Self-Organization in the Evolution of Speech , 2006, Oxford Studies in the Evolution of Language.

[3]  W. Hinzen,et al.  Explaining intersubjectivity. A comment on Arie Verhagen, Constructions of Intersubjectivity , 2008 .

[4]  Jack W. Bradbury,et al.  Principles of Animal Communication , 1998 .

[5]  David Lightfoot,et al.  Explaining language change: an evolutionary approach , 2002 .

[6]  Willem Zuidema,et al.  The major transitions in the evolution of language , 2005 .

[7]  R. Jackendoff.  Foundations of Language: Brain, Meaning, Grammar, Evolution , 2002 .

[8]  D. Bickerton.  Language and Species , 1990 .

[9]  Michael Oliphant,et al.  Learning and the Emergence of Coordinated Communication , 1997 .

[10]  S. Pinker,et al.  Natural language and natural selection , 1990, Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

[11]  M. Tomasello.  Do young children have adult syntactic competence? , 2000, Cognition.

[12]  Bart de Boer,et al.  The evolution of combinatorial phonology , 2009, J. Phonetics.

[13]  Marc D. Hauser,et al.  What Are the Uniquely Human Components of the Language Faculty , 2003 .

[14]  W. Klein,et al.  The Basic Variety (or: Couldn't natural languages be much simpler?) , 1997 .

[15]  Frank Landsbergen,et al.  Cultural evolutionary modeling of patterns in language change : Exercises in evolutionary linguistics , 2003 .

[16]  R. Seyfarth,et al.  Social influences on vocal development: Some general features of vocal development in nonhuman primates , 1997 .

[17]  J. Hurford.  The neural basis of predicate-argument structure. , 2003, The Behavioral and brain sciences.

[18]  Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy,et al.  The origins of complex language , 1999 .

[19]  David J. Weir,et al.  The convergence of mildly context-sensitive grammar formalisms , 1990 .

[20]  Henry Brighton,et al.  Compositional Syntax From Cultural Transmission , 2002, Artificial Life.

[21]  G. Békésy,et al.  Experiments in Hearing , 1963 .

[22]  W. Fitch,et al.  Computational Constraints on Syntactic Processing in a Nonhuman Primate , 2004, Science.

[23]  M Studdert-Kennedy.  On learning to speak. , 1983, Human neurobiology.

[24]  Kenneth Smith,et al.  The transmission of language: models of biological and cultural evolution , 2003 .

[25]  P. Marler,et al.  Monkey responses to three different alarm calls: evidence of predator classification and semantic communication. , 1980, Science.

[26]  Michael A. Arbib,et al.  The Evolving Mirror System: A Neural Basis for Language Readiness , 2003 .

[27]  James R. Hurford,et al.  Biological evolution of the Saussurean sign as a component of the language acquisition device , 1989 .

[28]  F. Nottebohm,et al.  DISCUSSION PAPER: * VOCAL TRACT AND BRAIN: A SEARCH FOR EVOLUTIONARY BOTTLENECKS , 1976, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.

[29]  Michael Oliphant,et al.  The Learning Barrier: Moving from Innate to Learned Systems of Communication , 1999, Adapt. Behav..

[30]  Patrick Morrison,et al.  The Symbolic Species: The Co-Evolution of Language and the Human Brain , 1999, BMJ.

[31]  Gert Westermann,et al.  Evolution of an Optimal Lexicon under Constraints from Embodiment , 2003, Artificial Life.

[32]  Michael Studdert-Kennedy,et al.  The Evolutionary Emergence of Language: Evolutionary Implications of the Particulate Principle: Imitation and the Dissociation of Phonetic Form from Semantic Function , 2000 .

[33]  M. Studdert-Kennedy,et al.  Social Transmission Favours Linguistic Generalisation , 2000 .

[34]  Willem H. Zuidema.  Optimal Communication in a Noisy and Heterogeneous Environment , 2003, ECAL.

[35]  M A Nowak,et al.  The evolution of language. , 1999, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[36]  S. Coren,et al.  In Sensation and perception , 1979 .

[37]  Jill de Villiers,et al.  Language for thought: Coming to understand false beliefs , 2003 .

[38]  Simon Kirby,et al.  Linguistic Evolution Through Language Acquisition: Learning, bottlenecks and the evolution of recursive syntax , 2002 .

[39]  Kenny Smith,et al.  The evolution of vocabulary. , 2004, Journal of theoretical biology.

[40]  Z. Harris,et al.  Foundations of language , 1941 .

[41]  R. Langacker,et al.  Constituency, dependency, and conceptual grouping , 1997 .

[42]  M. Tomasello,et al.  The role of language in the development of false belief understanding: a training study. , 2003, Child development.

[43]  Alison Wray.  Dual processing in protolanguage: performance without competence , 2002 .

[44]  A. Verhagen.  Intersubjectivity and explanation in linguistics: A reply to Hinzen and van Lambalgen , 2008 .

[45]  Partha Niyogi,et al.  Optimizing the mutual intelligibility of linguistic agents in a shared world , 2004, Artif. Intell..

[46]  M. Donald.  Origins of the modern mind , 1991 .

[47]  Alison Wray.  Formulaic Language and the Lexicon: Formulaic Language and the Lexicon , 2002 .

[48]  Geoffrey K. Pullum,et al.  Natural languages and context-free languages , 1982 .

[49]  C. F. Hockett.  The origin of speech. , 1960, Scientific American.

[50]  L. T. F. Gamut.  Logic, language, and meaning , 1991 .

[51]  T. Ikegami,et al.  Emergence of net-grammar in communicating agents. , 1996, Bio Systems.

[52]  M. Tomasello.  Origins of human communication , 2008 .

[53]  T W Deacon.  Evolutionary perspectives on language and brain plasticity. , 2000, Journal of communication disorders.

[54]  Luc Steels.  A self-organizing spatial vocabulary , 1995 .

[55]  Gunnar Fant,et al.  Acoustic Theory Of Speech Production , 1960 .

[56]  Nicola S. Clayton,et al.  The Mentality of Crows: Convergent Evolution of Intelligence in Corvids and Apes , 2004, Science.

[57]  David Lewis.  Convention: A Philosophical Study , 1986 .

[58]  A M Liberman,et al.  Perception of the speech code. , 1967, Psychological review.

[59]  David A. Leavens,et al.  Theory of mind in nonhuman primates , 1998, Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

[60]  A. Kaye,et al.  A Theory of Linguistic Signs , 1998 .