Computational challenges of evolving the language-ready brain

A theory of evolving the language-ready brain requires a theory of what it is that evolved. We offer the TCG (Template Construction Grammar) model of comprehension and production of utterances to exhibit hypotheses on how utterances may link to “what language is about.” A key subsystem of TCG is the SemRep system for semantic representation of a visual scene. We offer an account of how it may have evolved as an expansion of the ventral pathway supporting the planning of manual actions, complemented by a dorsal pathway for articulation. The Mirror System Hypothesis (MSH) claims that early Homo sapiens had protolanguage but not language and that cultural evolution yielded the social structures within which children could indeed acquire language. The article poses the challenge of understanding how a brain system could be innately specified that could develop into a TCG-like form, posing a range of questions for future research.

[1]  Jane C. Hill.  A computational model of language acquisition in the two-years-old , 1982 .

[2]  Noam Chomsky,et al.  Why Only Us: Language and Evolution , 2015 .

[3]  L. Fogassi,et al.  The extended features of mirror neurons and the voluntary control of vocalization in the pathway to language , 2013, Language and Cognition.

[4]  Irit Meir,et al.  The gradual emergence of phonological form in a new language , 2011, Natural language & linguistic theory.

[5]  Michael A. Arbib,et al.  Dorsal and ventral streams in the evolution of the language-ready brain: Linking language to the world , 2017, Journal of Neurolinguistics.

[6]  L. Steels.  Modeling the cultural evolution of language. , 2011, Physics of life reviews.

[7]  A. Wray.  Protolanguage as a holistic system for social interaction , 1998 .

[8]  B. D. Boer.  The Atoms of Language: The Mind's Hidden Rules of Grammar, by Mark C. Baker; Foundations of Language: Brain, Meaning, Grammar, Evolution, by Ray Jackendoff , 2003, Artif. Life.

[9]  S. Dehaene,et al.  The unique role of the visual word form area in reading , 2011, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[10]  Erin E. Hecht,et al.  Virtual dissection and comparative connectivity of the superior longitudinal fasciculus in chimpanzees and humans , 2015, NeuroImage.

[11]  I. Colagè.  The cultural evolution of language and brain: Comment on "Towards a Computational Comparative Neuroprimatology: Framing the language-ready brain" by Michael A. Arbib. , 2016, Physics of life reviews.

[12]  Christopher K. I. Williams,et al.  From Neuron to Cognition via Computational > Neuroscience , 2016 .

[13]  M. Arbib.  Towards a Computational Comparative Neuroprimatology: Framing the language-ready brain. , 2016, Physics of life reviews.

[14]  M. Arbib.  Complex imitation and the language-ready brain , 2013, Language and Cognition.

[15]  Peter Hagoort,et al.  Shared Syntax in Language Production and Language Comprehension—An fMRI Study , 2011, Cerebral cortex.

[16]  A. Caramazza,et al.  Dissociation of algorithmic and heuristic processes in language comprehension: Evidence from aphasia , 1976, Brain and Language.

[17]  M. Myowa-Yamakoshi.  The evolutionary roots of human imitation, action understanding and symbols , 2018, Benjamins Current Topics.

[18]  Michael Arbib,et al.  Dyadic brain modelling, mirror systems and the ontogenetic ritualization of ape gesture , 2014, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[19]  Jinyong Lee,et al.  Template Construction Grammar: From Visual Scene Description to Language Comprehension and Agrammatism , 2013, Neuroinformatics.

[20]  How the Brain Got Language , 2018, Interaction Studies.

[21]  Michael A. Arbib,et al.  Sensorimotor Transformations in the Worlds of Frogs and Robots , 1995, Artif. Intell..

[22]  David Lightfoot,et al.  How New Languages Emerge , 2006 .

[23]  M. Schlesewsky,et al.  Reconciling time, space and function: A new dorsal–ventral stream model of sentence comprehension , 2013, Brain and Language.

[24]  M. Arbib,et al.  Neurolinguistics must be computational , 1979 .

[25]  F. Chang.  12. The role of learning in theories of English and Japanese sentence processing , 2015 .

[26]  A. Friederici.  The brain basis of language processing: from structure to function. , 2011, Physiological reviews.

[27]  D. Plaut,et al.  Distributed circuits, not circumscribed centers, mediate visual recognition , 2013, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[28]  Michael A. Arbib,et al.  Modeling parietal-premotor interactions in primate control of grasping , 1998, Neural Networks.

[29]  Hal L. Smith,et al.  A competition model , 2008 .

[30]  M. Arbib.  Review essay: Niche Construction and the Evolution of Language: Was Territory scavenging the One Key Factor? Review Essay for Derek Bickerton (2009), Adam’s Tongue. How Humans Made Language, How Language Made Humans. New York: Hill & Wang , 2011 .

[31]  Angelo Cangelosi,et al.  Simulating the Evolution of Language , 2002, Springer London.

[32]  D. Bickerton.  Language and Human Behavior , 1996 .

[33]  Simon Kirby,et al.  Cumulative cultural evolution in the laboratory: An experimental approach to the origins of structure in human language , 2008, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[34]  M. Arbib,et al.  Language is handy but is it embodied? , 2014, Neuropsychologia.

[35]  Brian MacWhinney,et al.  Item-based patterns in early syntactic development , 2014 .

[36]  Simon Kirby,et al.  The Evolutionary Emergence of Language: Syntax Without Natural Selection: How Compositionality Emerges from Vocabulary in a Population of Learners , 2000 .

[37]  Sarah M. E. Gierhan,et al.  Shared Language , 2011, Psychological science.

[38]  Bruce A. Draper,et al.  The schema system , 1988, International Journal of Computer Vision.

[39]  Timothy E. J. Behrens,et al.  The evolution of the arcuate fasciculus revealed with comparative DTI , 2008, Nature Neuroscience.

[40]  F. Aboitiz.  How did vocal behavior “take over” the gestural communication system? , 2013, Language and Cognition.

[41]  Michael A. Arbib,et al.  Describing visual scenes: Towards a neurolinguistics based on construction grammar , 2008, Brain Research.

[42]  D. Poeppel,et al.  The cortical organization of speech processing , 2007, Nature Reviews Neuroscience.