The cultural evolution of language and brain: Comment on “Towards a Computational Comparative Neuroprimatology: Framing the language-ready brain” by Michael A. Arbib

2016 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 61-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivan Colagè
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Evolution Of Language

scholarly journals The cultural evolution of language

2016 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 37-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monica Tamariz ◽  
Simon Kirby
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Evolution Of Language

scholarly journals Cultural evolution leads to vocal iconicity in an experimental iterated learning task

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Niklas Erben Johansson ◽  
Jon W Carr ◽  
Simon Kirby
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Cognitive Biases ◽  
Learning Task ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Word Form ◽  
Single Word ◽  
Evolution Of Language ◽  
Transmission Chain ◽  
Audio Recordings ◽  
Iterated Learning

Abstract Experimental and cross-linguistic studies have shown that vocal iconicity is prevalent in words that carry meanings related to size and shape. Although these studies demonstrate the importance of vocal iconicity and reveal the cognitive biases underpinning it, there is less work demonstrating how these biases lead to the evolution of a sound symbolic lexicon in the first place. In this study, we show how words can be shaped by cognitive biases through cultural evolution. Using a simple experimental setup resembling the game telephone, we examined how a single word form changed as it was passed from one participant to the next by a process of immediate iterated learning. About 1,500 naïve participants were recruited online and divided into five condition groups. The participants in the control-group received no information about the meaning of the word they were about to hear, while the participants in the remaining four groups were informed that the word meant either big or small (with the meaning being presented in text), or round or pointy (with the meaning being presented as a picture). The first participant in a transmission chain was presented with a phonetically diverse word and asked to repeat it. Thereafter, the recording of the repeated word was played for the next participant in the same chain. The sounds of the audio recordings were then transcribed and categorized according to six binary sound parameters. By modelling the proportion of vowels or consonants for each sound parameter, the small-condition showed increases of front unrounded vowels and the pointy-condition increases of acute consonants. The results show that linguistic transmission is sufficient for vocal iconicity to emerge, which demonstrates the role non-arbitrary associations play in the evolution of language.

scholarly journals The Cultural Evolution of Language

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachael Bailes ◽  
Christine Cuskley
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Experimental Studies ◽  
Cultural Variation ◽  
Evolution Of Language ◽  
Language Faculty ◽  
Agent Based ◽  
Cultural Systems ◽  
The Relationship

Language is one of only a handful of human cultural systems that is both unique to our species, and universal. This chapter will focus on the cultural evolution of language, situating this alongside the phylogenetic and developmental timescales which also feed into the evolution of language. The chapter begins by outlining the relationship between the emergence of human language and the language faculty and the more rapid, ongoing processes of language change, which are often framed as predominantly cultural. In particular, previous work has emphasised how these timescales interact, and how cultural factors in particular shape which aspects of language exhibit broad cross-cultural variation or stability. This is followed by detailed evidence for this relationship from three domains, focusing on the role of cultural evolution in language as observed in natural language (both historical corpora and cross linguistic data), the cultural evolution of language in agent-based models, and finally, experimental studies of the cultural evolution of language. We conclude that the study of the cultural evolution of language forms an important data-rich model for the study of the evolution of cultural systems more generally, while also providing key insights into the specific dynamics of this uniquely human behaviour.

scholarly journals A computational model of the cultural co-evolution of language and mindreading

Synthese ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marieke Woensdregt ◽  
Chris Cummins ◽  
Kenny Smith
Keyword(s):  
Social Cognition ◽  
Computational Model ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Mental Representations ◽  
Biological Evolution ◽  
Evolution Of Language ◽  
The Right ◽  
Context Simulation ◽  
Innate Ability ◽  
Do So

Abstract Several evolutionary accounts of human social cognition posit that language has co-evolved with the sophisticated mindreading abilities of modern humans. It has also been argued that these mindreading abilities are the product of cultural, rather than biological, evolution. Taken together, these claims suggest that the evolution of language has played an important role in the cultural evolution of human social cognition. Here we present a new computational model which formalises the assumptions that underlie this hypothesis, in order to explore how language and mindreading interact through cultural evolution. This model treats communicative behaviour as an interplay between the context in which communication occurs, an agent’s individual perspective on the world, and the agent’s lexicon. However, each agent’s perspective and lexicon are private mental representations, not directly observable to other agents. Learners are therefore confronted with the task of jointly inferring the lexicon and perspective of their cultural parent, based on their utterances in context. Simulation results show that given these assumptions, an informative lexicon evolves not just under a pressure to be successful at communicating, but also under a pressure for accurate perspective-inference. When such a lexicon evolves, agents become better at inferring others’ perspectives; not because their innate ability to learn about perspectives changes, but because sharing a language (of the right type) with others helps them to do so.

scholarly journals Cultural Evolution of Language

2013 ◽  
pp. 303-332 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dan Dediu ◽  
Michael Cysouw ◽  
Stephen C. Levinson ◽  
Andrea Baronchelli ◽  
Morten H. Christiansen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Evolution Of Language
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