Linguistic Evolution through Language Acquisition - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Linguistic Evolution through Language Acquisition write by Ted Briscoe. This book was released on 2002-08-08. Linguistic Evolution through Language Acquisition available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. This is a study of how children acquire language and how this affects language change over generations. Written by an international team of experts, the volume proceeds from the basis that we can not only address the language faculty per se within the framework of evolutionary theory, but also the origins and subsequent development of languages themselves; languages evolve via cultural rather than biological transmission on a historical rather than genetic timescale. The book is distinctive in utilizing computational simulation and modelling to help ensure the theories constructed are complete and precise. Drawing on a wide range of examples, the book covers the why and how of specific syntactic universals; the nature of syntactic change; the language-learning mechanisms required to acquire an existing linguistic system accurately and to impose further structure on an emerging system; and the evolution of language(s) in relation to this learning mechanism.
Why Only Us
Why Only Us - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Why Only Us write by Robert C. Berwick. This book was released on 2017-05-12. Why Only Us available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Berwick and Chomsky draw on recent developments in linguistic theory to offer an evolutionary account of language and humans' remarkable, species-specific ability to acquire it. “A loosely connected collection of four essays that will fascinate anyone interested in the extraordinary phenomenon of language.” —New York Review of Books We are born crying, but those cries signal the first stirring of language. Within a year or so, infants master the sound system of their language; a few years after that, they are engaging in conversations. This remarkable, species-specific ability to acquire any human language—“the language faculty”—raises important biological questions about language, including how it has evolved. This book by two distinguished scholars—a computer scientist and a linguist—addresses the enduring question of the evolution of language. Robert Berwick and Noam Chomsky explain that until recently the evolutionary question could not be properly posed, because we did not have a clear idea of how to define “language” and therefore what it was that had evolved. But since the Minimalist Program, developed by Chomsky and others, we know the key ingredients of language and can put together an account of the evolution of human language and what distinguishes us from all other animals. Berwick and Chomsky discuss the biolinguistic perspective on language, which views language as a particular object of the biological world; the computational efficiency of language as a system of thought and understanding; the tension between Darwin's idea of gradual change and our contemporary understanding about evolutionary change and language; and evidence from nonhuman animals, in particular vocal learning in songbirds.
Language Acquisition, Change and Emergence
Language Acquisition, Change and Emergence - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Language Acquisition, Change and Emergence write by James W. MINETT. This book was released on 2005-07-07. Language Acquisition, Change and Emergence available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. This volume is a collection of essays by noted researchers from diverse fields that deals with a broad spectrum of issues in the study of language evolution. The principle topics addressed here include: the genetic and cognitive bases for the phylogenetic emergence of language; several distinct accounts of the underlying cognitive processes by which children learn to acquire language; a critique of the methods employed by historical linguists in the last century; the modeling of language evolution using mathematical and computational techniques; discussions on the complexity of language. Published by City University of Hong Kong Press. 香港城市大學出版社出版。
Creating Language
Creating Language - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Creating Language write by Morten H. Christiansen. This book was released on 2016-03-18. Creating Language available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. A work that reveals the profound links between the evolution, acquisition, and processing of language, and proposes a new integrative framework for the language sciences. Language is a hallmark of the human species; the flexibility and unbounded expressivity of our linguistic abilities is unique in the biological world. In this book, Morten Christiansen and Nick Chater argue that to understand this astonishing phenomenon, we must consider how language is created: moment by moment, in the generation and understanding of individual utterances; year by year, as new language learners acquire language skills; and generation by generation, as languages change, split, and fuse through the processes of cultural evolution. Christiansen and Chater propose a revolutionary new framework for understanding the evolution, acquisition, and processing of language, offering an integrated theory of how language creation is intertwined across these multiple timescales. Christiansen and Chater argue that mainstream generative approaches to language do not provide compelling accounts of language evolution, acquisition, and processing. Their own account draws on important developments from across the language sciences, including statistical natural language processing, learnability theory, computational modeling, and psycholinguistic experiments with children and adults. Christiansen and Chater also consider some of the major implications of their theoretical approach for our understanding of how language works, offering alternative accounts of specific aspects of language, including the structure of the vocabulary, the importance of experience in language processing, and the nature of recursive linguistic structure.
The Evolutionary Emergence of Language
The Evolutionary Emergence of Language - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Evolutionary Emergence of Language write by Chris Knight. This book was released on 2000-11-20. The Evolutionary Emergence of Language available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Language has no counterpart in the animal world. Unique to Homo sapiens, it appears inseparable from human nature. But how, when and why did it emerge? The contributors to this volume - linguists, anthropologists, cognitive scientists, and others - adopt a modern Darwinian perspective which offers a bold synthesis of the human and natural sciences. As a feature of human social intelligence, language evolution is driven by biologically anomalous levels of social cooperation. Phonetic competence correspondingly reflects social pressures for vocal imitation, learning, and other forms of social transmission. Distinctively human social and cultural strategies gave rise to the complex syntactical structure of speech. This book, presenting language as a remarkable social adaptation, testifies to the growing influence of evolutionary thinking in contemporary linguistics. It will be welcomed by all those interested in human evolution, evolutionary psychology, linguistic anthropology, and general linguistics.
