Towards an evolutionary theory of language |
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| Affiliation: | 1. Institute for Advanced Study, Einstein Drive, Princeton, NJ 08540, USA;2. Institute for Advanced Study, Einstein Drive, Princeton, NJ 08540, USA.;3. Dept of Applied Mathematics, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK LS2 PJT;1. Department of Anthropology, University of Northern Colorado, Campus Box 90, Greeley, CO 80639, USA;2. School of Anatomical Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Health Sciences, 7 York Road Parktown, 2193 Johannesburg, South Africa;3. University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, 3260 South Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6324, USA;1. Institut Català de Paleoecologia Humana i Evolució Social (IPHES), Zona Educacional 4, Campus Sescelades URV (W3 building), 43007 Tarragona, Spain;2. Area de Prehistòria, Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV), Av. Catalunya, 35, 43002 Tarragona, Spain;3. Grupo de Estudos para a Prehistoria do Noroeste (GEPN), Dpto. Historia I, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, Pz. da Universidade, nº1, 15782, Santiago de Compostela, Spain;1. CLLE-ERSS, CNRS & Université de Toulouse-Le Mirail, France;2. Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, Italy;3. University of Vienna, Austria;1. Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Blekinge Institute of Technology, Karlskrona SE-371 79, Sweden;2. Department of Computer Science, Malmö University, Malmö SE-205 06, Sweden |
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| Abstract: | Language is a biological trait that radically changed the performance of one species and the appearance of the planet. Understanding how human language came about is one of the most interesting tasks for evolutionary biology. Here we discuss how natural selection can guide the emergence of some basic features of human language, including arbitrary signs, words, syntactic communication and grammar. We show how natural selection can lead to the duality of patterning of human language: sequences of phonemes form words; sequences of words form sentences. Finally, we present a framework for the population dynamics of grammar acquisition, which allows us to study the cultural evolution of grammar and the biological evolution of universal grammar. |
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