Experimental Studies on the Cultural Evolution of Language

Why are languages the way they are? The biases and constraints that explain why languages display the traits they do—instead of other possible ones—include human cognition, social dynamics, communicative function, the structure of meanings, and the interactions between these. Cultural language evolution is concerned with explaining the causal pathways that link these biases and constraints with fundamental linguistic traits, such as combinatoriality, compositionality, conventionality, and arbitrariness. The cultural evolution of language, or the emergence of a language from no language, begins when motivated signals are used in context by individuals who do not share a means of communication. Repeated interaction between interlocutors makes individual signals compressible through reduction or simplification and can entrench idiosyncratic patterns. Transmission to new learners results in the increasing compressibility at the level of the system through the introduction of categories and regular rules, and ...

[1]  D. Wolfle.  The Relative Stability of First and Second Syllables in an Artificial Language , 1933 .

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

[3]  A. Senghas,et al.  Children Creating Language: How Nicaraguan Sign Language Acquired a Spatial Grammar , 2001, Psychological science.

[4]  Simon Kirby,et al.  Spontaneous evolution of linguistic structure-an iterated learning model of the emergence of regularity and irregularity , 2001, IEEE Trans. Evol. Comput..

[5]  N. Chater,et al.  Simplicity: a unifying principle in cognitive science? , 2003, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[6]  M. Pickering,et al.  Toward a mechanistic psychology of dialogue , 2004, Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

[7]  Bruno Galantucci,et al.  An Experimental Study of the Emergence of Human Communication Systems , 2005, Cogn. Sci..

[8]  Carla L. Hudson Kam,et al.  Regularizing Unpredictable Variation: The Roles of Adult and Child Learners in Language Formation and Change , 2005 .

[9]  Simon Kirby,et al.  Language as an evolutionary system , 2005 .

[10]  W. Bruce Croft,et al.  Selection Model of , 2022 .

[11]  A. Wedel.  Exemplar models, evolution and language change , 2006 .

[12]  Jon Oberlander,et al.  Foundations of Representation: Where Might Graphical Symbol Systems Come From? , 2007, Cogn. Sci..

[13]  Thomas L. Griffiths,et al.  Language Evolution by Iterated Learning With Bayesian Agents , 2007, Cogn. Sci..

[14]  D. Ladd,et al.  Linguistic tone is related to the population frequency of the adaptive haplogroups of two brain size genes, ASPM and Microcephalin , 2007, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[15]  A. Wray,et al.  The consequences of talking to strangers: Evolutionary corollaries of socio-cultural influences on linguistic form , 2007 .

[16]  P. Kay,et al.  Color naming reflects optimal partitions of color space , 2007, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[17]  Simon Kirby,et al.  Innateness and culture in the evolution of language , 2006, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[18]  Morten H. Christiansen,et al.  Language as shaped by the brain. , 2008, The Behavioral and brain sciences.

[19]  S. Kirby,et al.  Cultural evolution: implications for understanding the human language faculty and its evolution , 2008, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[20]  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.

[21]  A. Whiten,et al.  The multiple roles of cultural transmission experiments in understanding human cultural evolution , 2008, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[22]  E. Newport,et al.  Getting it right by getting it wrong: When learners change languages , 2009, Cognitive Psychology.

[23]  P. Mitra,et al.  De novo establishment of wild-type song culture in the zebra finch , 2009, Nature.

[24]  Thomas L. Griffiths,et al.  The evolution of frequency distributions: Relating regularization to inductive biases through iterated learning , 2009, Cognition.

[25]  W. Bruce Croft,et al.  Language Is a Complex Adaptive System: Position Paper , 2009 .

[26]  Simon Kirby,et al.  Systematicity and arbitrariness in novel communication systems , 2010 .

[27]  S. Levinson,et al.  The myth of language universals: language diversity and its importance for cognitive science. , 2009, The Behavioral and brain sciences.

[28]  M. Pagel.  Human language as a culturally transmitted replicator , 2009, Nature Reviews Genetics.

[29]  Christian Kroos,et al.  The effects of rapidity of fading on communication systems , 2010 .

[30]  S. Garrod,et al.  Experimental semiotics: a new approach for studying the emergence and the evolution of human communication , 2010 .

[31]  Kenny Smith,et al.  Eliminating unpredictable variation through iterated learning , 2010, Cognition.

[32]  W. Fitch.  The Evolution of Language , 2010 .

[33]  C. Padden,et al.  Emerging Sign Languages , 2010, Languages.

[34]  S. Kirby,et al.  Language evolution in the laboratory , 2010, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[35]  Simon Garrod,et al.  The Interactive Evolution of Human Communication Systems , 2010, Cogn. Sci..

[36]  G. Lupyan,et al.  Language Structure Is Partly Determined by Social Structure , 2010, PloS one.

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

[38]  Adilson E. Motter,et al.  Niche as a Determinant of Word Fate in Online Groups , 2010, PloS one.

[39]  Simon J. Greenhill,et al.  Evolved structure of language shows lineage-specific trends in word-order universals , 2011, Nature.

[40]  Steven T Piantadosi,et al.  Word lengths are optimized for efficient communication , 2011, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[41]  Gareth Roberts,et al.  The emergence of duality of patterning: Insights from the laboratory , 2012, Language and Cognition.

[42]  P. Smolensky,et al.  Learning biases predict a word order universal , 2012, Cognition.

[43]  Kenny Smith,et al.  Cultural Evolution and Perpetuation of Arbitrary Communicative Conventions in Experimental Microsocieties , 2012, PloS one.

[44]  Tessa Verhoef,et al.  The origins of duality of patterning in artificial whistled languages , 2012, Language and Cognition.

[45]  Daniel Nettle,et al.  Social scale and structural complexity in human languages , 2012, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[46]  Gary Lupyan,et al.  Understanding the Origins of Morphological Diversity: the Linguistic Niche Hypothesis , 2012, Adv. Complex Syst..

[47]  Michael A. Arbib,et al.  How to Bootstrap a Human Communication System , 2013, Cogn. Sci..

[48]  T. Griffiths,et al.  Cultural transmission results in convergence towards colour term universals , 2013, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[49]  Simon Kirby,et al.  Emergence of combinatorial structure and economy through iterated learning with continuous acoustic signals , 2014, J. Phonetics.

[50]  H. D. Swart,et al.  The semantic origins of word order , 2014, Cognition.

[51]  Simon Kirby,et al.  Languages adapt to their contextual niche , 2014, Language and Cognition.

[52]  S. Kirby,et al.  Iterated learning and the evolution of language , 2014, Current Opinion in Neurobiology.

[53]  T. M. Ellison,et al.  Cultural selection drives the evolution of human communication systems , 2014, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[54]  Amy Perfors,et al.  Language Evolution Can Be Shaped by the Structure of the World , 2014, Cogn. Sci..

[55]  Simon Kirby,et al.  How arbitrary is language? , 2014, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[56]  S. Kirby,et al.  Cultural evolution of systematically structured behaviour in a non-human primate , 2014, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[57]  Susan Goldin-Meadow,et al.  Creating a communication system from scratch: gesture beats vocalization hands down , 2014, Front. Psychol..

[58]  C. Castellano,et al.  The adoption of linguistic rules in native and non-native speakers: Evidence from a Wug task , 2015 .

[59]  Gary Lupyan,et al.  Iconicity can ground the creation of vocal symbols , 2015, Royal Society Open Science.

[60]  Bruno Galantucci,et al.  How communication changes when we cannot mime the world: Experimental evidence for the effect of iconicity on combinatoriality , 2015, Cognition.

[61]  Simon Kirby,et al.  Word Meanings Evolve to Selectively Preserve Distinctions on Salient Dimensions , 2015, Cogn. Sci..

[62]  Nicolas Gauvrit,et al.  Structure emerges faster during cultural transmission in children than in adults , 2015, Cognition.

[63]  Morten H. Christiansen,et al.  Arbitrariness, Iconicity, and Systematicity in Language , 2015, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[64]  E. Newport,et al.  Harmonic biases in child learners: In support of language universals , 2015, Cognition.

[65]  S. Kirby,et al.  Compression and communication in the cultural evolution of linguistic structure , 2015, Cognition.

[66]  Simon Kirby,et al.  Speaker Input Variability Does Not Explain Why Larger Populations Have Simpler Languages , 2015, PloS one.

[67]  Simon Kirby,et al.  Culture: Copying, Compression, and Conventionality , 2014, Cogn. Sci..

[68]  M. Tomasello.  The ontogeny of cultural learning. , 2016, Current opinion in psychology.

[69]  O. Feher,et al.  Structural priming in artificial languages and the regularisation of unpredictable variation , 2016 .

[70]  S. Kirby,et al.  The cultural evolution of language. , 2016, Current opinion in psychology.

[71]  Simon Kirby,et al.  The Cultural Evolution of Structured Languages in an Open‐Ended, Continuous World , 2016, Cogn. Sci..