Some facts about primate (include human) communication and social learning

These are exciting times for all those who have refused to listen to the Societe Linguistique de Paris. Investigation of the origins and evolution of language is back, and investigators have a whole new range of knowledge and methodologies to bring to the task. Among the most exciting of the new scientific tools — for all of the reasons that Cangelosi and Parisi outline in their introduction — are computer models designed to simulate aspects of some biological, psychological, and sociological processes that may have been involved in the origins and evolution of language. The problem, of course, is that a simulation is a simulation of something, and it is very useful if that something is available for inspection and comparison — which is not exactly the case for things that have occurred in the ancient past. Cangelosi and Parisi bemoan “a very limited, in a sense nonexistent, empirical base”.

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