Cultural evolution: implications for understanding the human language faculty and its evolution Export

@article{citeulike:3709841, abstract = {Human language is unique among the communication systems of the natural world: it is socially learned and, as a consequence of its recursively compositional structure, offers open-ended communicative potential. The structure of this communication system can be explained as a consequence of the evolution of the human biological capacity for language or the cultural evolution of language itself. We argue, supported by a formal model, that an explanatory account that involves some role for cultural evolution has profound implications for our understanding of the biological evolution of the language faculty: under a number of reasonable scenarios, cultural evolution can shield the language faculty from selection, such that strongly constraining language-specific learning biases are unlikely to evolve. We therefore argue that language is best seen as a consequence of cultural evolution in populations with a weak and/or domain-general language faculty.}, author = {Smith, Kenny and Kirby, Simon}, citeulike-article-id = {3709841}, citeulike-linkout-0 = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2008.0145}, citeulike-linkout-1 = {http://www.isrl.uiuc.edu/~amag/langev/paper/smithKirby08culturalEvolution.html}, citeulike-linkout-2 = {http://journals.royalsociety.org/content/a742511581m2t722}, day = {12}, doi = {10.1098/rstb.2008.0145}, journal = {Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences}, keywords = {cultural-evolution}, month = {November}, number = {1509}, pages = {3591--3603}, posted-at = {2009-01-06 20:26:51}, priority = {2}, title = {Cultural evolution: implications for understanding the human language faculty and its evolution}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2008.0145}, volume = {363}, year = {2008} }

TY - JOUR ID - citeulike:3709841 L3 - citeulike-article-id:3709841 N2 - Human language is unique among the communication systems of the natural world: it is socially learned and, as a consequence of its recursively compositional structure, offers open-ended communicative potential. The structure of this communication system can be explained as a consequence of the evolution of the human biological capacity for language or the cultural evolution of language itself. We argue, supported by a formal model, that an explanatory account that involves some role for cultural evolution has profound implications for our understanding of the biological evolution of the language faculty: under a number of reasonable scenarios, cultural evolution can shield the language faculty from selection, such that strongly constraining language-specific learning biases are unlikely to evolve. We therefore argue that language is best seen as a consequence of cultural evolution in populations with a weak and/or domain-general language faculty. IS - 1509 JF - Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences EP - 3603 TI - Cultural evolution: implications for understanding the human language faculty and its evolution VL - 363 SP - 3591 KW - cultural-evolution AU - Smith, Kenny AU - Kirby, Simon PY - 2008/11/12/ UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2008.0145 ER -