Evolutionary biology of language.

Language is the most important evolutionary invention of the last few million years. It was an adaptation that helped our species to exchange information, make plans, express new ideas and totally change the appearance of the planet. How human language evolved from animal communication is one of the most challenging questions for evolutionary biology The aim of this paper is to outline the major principles that guided language evolution in terms of mathematical models of evolutionary dynamics and game theory. I will discuss how natural selection can lead to the emergence of arbitrary signs, the formation of words and syntactic communication.

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

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

[3]  G. Miller.  The Psychology Of Communication , 1967 .

[4]  Eörs Szathmáry,et al.  The Origins of Life , 1999 .

[5]  Eugene Galanter,et al.  Handbook of mathematical psychology: I. , 1963 .

[6]  Steven Pinker,et al.  Words and rules , 1998 .

[7]  M. Nowak,et al.  The evolutionary language game. , 1999, Journal of theoretical biology.

[8]  D. E. Matthews.  Evolution and the Theory of Games , 1977 .

[9]  R. N. Indah.  Language and Speech , 1958, Nature.

[10]  F. Aboitiz,et al.  The evolutionary origin of the language areas in the human brain. A neuroanatomical perspective , 1997, Brain Research Reviews.

[11]  Michael C. Corballis,et al.  The lopsided ape : evolution of the generative mind , 1991 .

[12]  M. Studdert-Kennedy,et al.  Approaches To The Evolution Of Language: Social And Cognitive Bases , 1998 .

[13]  Philip Lieberman,et al.  The Biology and Evolution of Language , 1984 .

[14]  M A Nowak,et al.  An error limit for the evolution of language , 1999, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences.

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

[16]  J. Terrell.  The Great Human Diasporas: The History of Diversity and Evolution.Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza , Francesco Cavalli-Sforza , Sarah Thorne , 1997 .

[17]  M A Nowak,et al.  Language evolution and information theory. , 2000, Journal of theoretical biology.

[18]  Elissa L. Newport,et al.  Maturational Constraints on Language Learning , 1990, Cogn. Sci..

[19]  P. Niyogi,et al.  A language learning model for finite parameter spaces , 1996, Cognition.

[20]  B. MacWhinney,et al.  Language Development , 2015 .

[21]  Ray Jackendoff,et al.  The Architecture of the Language Faculty , 1996 .

[22]  M W Feldman,et al.  Pleiotropy and preadaptation in the evolution of human language capacity. , 1989, Theoretical population biology.

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

[24]  George Kingsley Zipf,et al.  The Psychobiology of Language , 2022 .

[25]  M. Gazzaniga,et al.  The Organization of Human Language Cortex: Special Adaptation or Common Cortical Design? , 1997 .

[26]  W. J. Smith.  The behavior of communicating , 1977 .

[27]  Partha Niyogi,et al.  The Informational Complexity of Learning , 1998, Springer US.

[28]  M. Gopnik,et al.  Familial aggregation of a developmental language disorder , 1991, Cognition.

[29]  M. Feldman,et al.  Cultural transmission and evolution: a quantitative approach. , 1981, Monographs in population biology.

[30]  Noam Chomsky,et al.  Language and problems of knowledge : the Managua lectures , 1990 .

[31]  L. Cavalli-Sforza,et al.  Genes, peoples, and languages. , 1997, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[32]  George A. Miller,et al.  The science of words , 1991 .

[33]  R. Seyfarth,et al.  How Monkeys See the World , 1990 .

[34]  R. Schiffer.  Psychobiology of Language , 1986 .

[35]  James R. Hurford,et al.  The evolution of the critical period for language acquisition , 1991, Cognition.

[36]  P. Pye-Smith.  The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex , 1871, Nature.

[37]  Richard C. Anderson,et al.  How Many Words are There in Printed School English , 1984 .

[38]  F. Newmeyer.  Functional explanation in linguistics and the origins of language , 1991 .

[39]  Luc Steels,et al.  The synthetic modeling of language origins , 1997 .

[40]  A. von Haeseler,et al.  Error, population structure and the origin of diverse sign systems. , 2000, Journal of theoretical biology.

[41]  T. Allison,et al.  Word recognition in the human inferior temporal lobe , 1994, Nature.

[42]  M. Nowak,et al.  Nash equilibria for an evolutionary language game , 2000, Journal of mathematical biology.

[43]  S. Pinker.  The Language Instinct , 1994 .

[44]  A. Whiten,et al.  Primate Calls, Human Language, and Nonverbal Communication [and Comments and Reply] , 1993, Current Anthropology.

[45]  Noam Chomsky,et al.  Language and Mind , 1973 .

[46]  David Parkin,et al.  Language, Culture and Communication , 1972 .

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

[48]  K. Frisch.  The dance language and orientation of bees , 1967 .

[49]  G. A. Miller,et al.  Finitary models of language users , 1963 .

[50]  William E. Nagy,et al.  The Acquisition of Morphology: Learning the Contribution of Suffixes to the Meanings of Derivatives , 1993 .

[51]  Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza,et al.  The great human diasporas : a history of diversity and evolution , 1995 .

[52]  Noam Chomsky,et al.  वाक्यविन्यास का सैद्धान्तिक पक्ष = Aspects of the theory of syntax , 1965 .

[53]  M. Skolnick,et al.  The evolution of surnames: an analysis of their distribution and extinction. , 1974, Theoretical population biology.

[54]  Norbert Hornstein,et al.  From icons to symbols: Some speculations on the origins of language , 1986 .

[55]  Martin A. Nowak,et al.  The evolution of syntactic communication , 2000, Nature.

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

[57]  M A Nowak,et al.  The basic reproductive ratio of a word, the maximum size of a lexicon. , 2000, Journal of theoretical biology.

[58]  Eörs Szathmáry,et al.  The Major Transitions in Evolution , 1997 .