The Evolution of Human Language: The faculty of language: what is it, who has it, and how did it evolve?
01 Jan 2010-
TL;DR: It is argued that an understanding of the faculty of language requires substantial interdisciplinary cooperation and how current developments in linguistics can be profitably wedded to work in evolutionary biology, anthropology, psychology, and neuroscience is suggested.
Abstract: We argue that an understanding of the faculty of language requires substantial interdisciplinary cooperation. We suggest how current developments in linguistics can be profitably wedded to work in evolutionary biology, anthropology, psychology, and neuroscience. We submit that a distinction should be made between the faculty of language in the broad sense (FLB) and in the narrow sense (FLN). FLB includes a sensory-motor system, a conceptual-intentional system, and the computational mechanisms for recursion, providing the capacity to generate an infinite range of expressions from a finite set of elements. We hypothesize that FLN only includes recursion and is the only uniquely human component of the faculty of language. We further argue that FLN may have evolved for reasons other than language, hence comparative studies might look for evidence of such computations outside of the domain of communication (for example, number, navigation, and social relations).
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TL;DR: In this article, a review of recent progress in cognitive science suggests that truly human-like learning and thinking machines will have to reach beyond current engineering trends in both what they learn and how they learn it.
Abstract: Recent progress in artificial intelligence has renewed interest in building systems that learn and think like people. Many advances have come from using deep neural networks trained end-to-end in tasks such as object recognition, video games, and board games, achieving performance that equals or even beats that of humans in some respects. Despite their biological inspiration and performance achievements, these systems differ from human intelligence in crucial ways. We review progress in cognitive science suggesting that truly human-like learning and thinking machines will have to reach beyond current engineering trends in both what they learn and how they learn it. Specifically, we argue that these machines should (1) build causal models of the world that support explanation and understanding, rather than merely solving pattern recognition problems; (2) ground learning in intuitive theories of physics and psychology to support and enrich the knowledge that is learned; and (3) harness compositionality and learning-to-learn to rapidly acquire and generalize knowledge to new tasks and situations. We suggest concrete challenges and promising routes toward these goals that can combine the strengths of recent neural network advances with more structured cognitive models.
2,010 citations
Book•
28 Apr 2011
TL;DR: The authors, The Neuropsychology of language and its relationship with the human brain: A Guide to Research on the Perception of Speech and its Implications for Research and Theory, The authors.
Abstract: K. Haberlandt, Methods in Reading Research. F. Ferreira and M. Anes, Why Study Spoken Language? K. Rayner and S.C. Sereno, Eye Movements in Reading Psycholinguistic Studies. M. Kutas and C.K. Van Petten, Psycholinguistics Electrified: Event-Related Brain Potential Investigations. R.E. Remez, A Guide to Research on the Perception of Speech. K.R. Kluender, Speech Perception as a Tractable Problem in Cognitive Science. D.W. Massaro, Psychological Aspects of Speech Perception: Implications for Research and Theory. S.E. Lively, D.B. Pisoni, and S.D. Goldinger, Spoken Word Recognition: Research and Theory. D.A. Balota, Visual Word Recognition: The Journey from Features to Meaning. G.B. Simpson, Context and the Processing of Ambiguous Words. D.C. Mitchell, Sentence Parsing. R.W. Gibbs, Jr., Figurative Thought and Figurative Language. C. Cacciari and S. Glucksberg, Understanding Figurative Language. M. Singer, Discourse Inference Processes. A.C. Graesser, C.L. McMahen, and B.K. Johnson, Question Asking and Answering. P. van den Broek, Comprehension and Memory of Narrative Texts: Inferences and Coherence. C.R. Fletcher, Levels of Representation in Memory for Discourse. A.M. Glenberg, P. Kruley, and W.E. Langston, Analogical Processes in Comprehension: Simulation of a Mental Model. B.K. Britton, Understanding Expository Text: Building Mental Structures to Induce Insights. S.C. Garrod and A.J. Sanford, Resolving Sentences in a Discourse Context: How Discourse Representation Affects Language Understanding. A.J. Sanford and S.C. Garrod, Selective Processing in Text Understanding. W. Kintsch, The Psychology of Discourse Processing. P. Bloom, Recent Controversies in the Study of Language Acquisition. L. Gerken, Child Phonology: Past Research, Present Questions, Future Directions. J. Oakhill, Individual Differences in Children's Text Comprehension. C.A. Perfetti, Psycholinguistics and Reading Ability. R.K. Olson, Language Deficits in Specific Reading Disability. K. Kilborn, Learning a Language Late: Second Language Acquisition in Adults. K. Bock and W. Levelt, Language Production: Grammatical Encoding. H.H. Clark, Discourse in Production. D. Caplan, Language and the Brain. E. Zurif and D. Swinney, The Neuropsychology of Language. P.A. Carpenter, A. Miyake, and M.A Just, Working Memory Constraints in Comprehension: Evidence from Individual Differences, Aphasia, and Aging. A. Garnham, Future Directions. Index.
1,926 citations
TL;DR: New data show that infants use computational strategies to detect the statistical and prosodic patterns in language input, and that this leads to the discovery of phonemes and words.
Abstract: Infants learn language with remarkable speed, but how they do it remains a mystery. New data show that infants use computational strategies to detect the statistical and prosodic patterns in language input, and that this leads to the discovery of phonemes and words. Social interaction with another human being affects speech learning in a way that resembles communicative learning in songbirds. The brain's commitment to the statistical and prosodic patterns that are experienced early in life might help to explain the long-standing puzzle of why infants are better language learners than adults. Successful learning by infants, as well as constraints on that learning, are changing theories of language acquisition.
1,818 citations
Cites background from "The Evolution of Human Language: Th..."
...Tests on non-human species and in domains outside the field of language have led to the view that aspects of language might have evolved to match a set of domain-general perceptual and learning abilitie...
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TL;DR: It is submitted that mental time travel is not an encapsulated cognitive system, but instead comprises several subsidiary mechanisms that allow prediction of future situations and should be considered in addition to direct evidence of future-directed action.
Abstract: In a dynamic world, mechanisms allowing prediction of future situations can provide a selective advantage. We suggest that memory systems differ in the degree of flexibility they offer for anticipatory behavior and put forward a corresponding taxonomy of prospection. The adaptive advantage of any memory system can only lie in what it contributes for future survival. The most flexible is episodic memory, which we suggest is part of a more general faculty of mental time travel that allows us not only to go back in time, but also to foresee, plan, and shape virtually any specific future event. We review comparative studies and find that, in spite of increased research in the area, there is as yet no convincing evidence for mental time travel in nonhuman animals. We submit that mental time travel is not an encapsulated cognitive system, but instead comprises several subsidiary mechanisms. A theater metaphor serves as an analogy for the kind of mechanisms required for effective mental time travel. We propose that future research should consider these mechanisms in addition to direct evidence of future-directed action. We maintain that the emergence of mental time travel in evolution was a crucial step towards our current success.
1,623 citations
Cites background from "The Evolution of Human Language: Th..."
...Recursion may also be said to underlie other aspects of human thought, including perhaps music, manufacture, navigation, social relationships, and numbering systems (Corballis 1991; Hauser et al. 2002)....
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...Like language, imaginary narratives may operate according to the principle of “discrete infinity” (Hauser et al. 2002), involving the recursive application of rules to create an unlimited set of potential future scenarios (Suddendorf & Corballis 1997)....
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...If we are correct in supposing that mental time travel is uniquely human, then this may explain why language itself is unique to our species, at least in the strong sense defined by Hauser et al. (2002)....
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...We admit that a substantial body of comparative data is required before it can be concluded that any trait is uniquely human (Hauser et al. 2002)....
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TL;DR: This target article summarizes decades of cross-linguistic work by typologists and descriptive linguists, showing just how few and unprofound the universal characteristics of language are, once the authors honestly confront the diversity offered to us by the world's 6,000 to 8,000 languages.
Abstract: Talk of linguistic universals has given cognitive scientists the impression that languages are all built to a common pattern. In fact, there are vanishingly few universals of language in the direct sense that all languages exhibit them. Instead, diversity can be found at almost every level of linguistic organization. This fundamentally changes the object of enquiry from a cognitive science perspective. This target article summarizes decades of cross-linguistic work by typologists and descriptive linguists, showing just how few and unprofound the universal characteristics of language are, once we honestly confront the diversity offered to us by the world's 6,000 to 8,000 languages. After surveying the various uses of "universal," we illustrate the ways languages vary radically in sound, meaning, and syntactic organization, and then we examine in more detail the core grammatical machinery of recursion, constituency, and grammatical relations. Although there are significant recurrent patterns in organization, these are better explained as stable engineering solutions satisfying multiple design constraints, reflecting both cultural-historical factors and the constraints of human cognition. Linguistic diversity then becomes the crucial datum for cognitive science: we are the only species with a communication system that is fundamentally variable at all levels. Recognizing the true extent of structural diversity in human language opens up exciting new research directions for cognitive scientists, offering thousands of different natural experiments given by different languages, with new opportunities for dialogue with biological paradigms concerned with change and diversity, and confronting us with the extraordinary plasticity of the highest human skills.
1,385 citations
Cites background from "The Evolution of Human Language: Th..."
...5 Recent findings are said to show that “animals lack the capacity to create open-ended generative systems,” whereas human “languages go beyond purely local structure by including a capacity for recursive embedding of phrases within phrases” (Hauser et al. 2002, p. 1577)....
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...In the recent debates following Hauser et al. (2002), there is sometimes a conflation between constituent structure and recursion (see, e.g., Pinker & Jackendoff 2005, p. 215), but they are potentially orthogonal properties of languages....
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...These adaptations of the peripheral input/output systems for spoken language have, for some unaccountable reason, been minimized in much of the discussion of language origins, in favor of an emphasis on syntax (see, for example, Hauser et al. 2002)....
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...…syntax for a general cognitive science audience, it is simply presumed that the syntax of natural languages can basically be expressed in terms of constituent structure, and thus the familiar tree diagrams for sentence structure (Hauser et al. 2002; Jackendoff 2002; 2003a; Pinker 1994, p. 97 ff.)....
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References
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TL;DR: Methodological preliminaries of generative grammars as theories of linguistic competence; theory of performance; organization of a generative grammar; justification of grammar; descriptive and explanatory theories; evaluation procedures; linguistic theory and language learning.
12,586 citations
"The Evolution of Human Language: Th..." refers background in this paper
...According to one view (1), questions concerning abstract computational mechanisms are distinct from those concerning communication, the latter targeted at problems at the interface between abstract computation and both sensory-motor and conceptual-intentional interfaces....
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Book•
01 Jan 1992
TL;DR: This twentieth-anniversary edition reissues Noam Chomsky's classic work The Minimalist Program with a new preface by the author, which emphasizes that the minimalist approach developed in the book and in subsequent work "is a program, not a theory."
Abstract: A classic work that situates linguistic theory in the broader cognitive sciences, formulating and developing the minimalist program. In his foundational book, The Minimalist Program, published in 1995, Noam Chomsky offered a significant contribution to the generative tradition in linguistics. This twentieth-anniversary edition reissues this classic work with a new preface by the author. In four essays, Chomsky attempts to situate linguistic theory in the broader cognitive sciences, with the essays formulating and progressively developing the minimalist approach to linguistic theory. Building on the theory of principles and parameters and, in particular, on principles of economy of derivation and representation, the minimalist framework takes Universal Grammar as providing a unique computational system, with derivations driven by morphological properties, to which the syntactic variation of languages is also restricted. Within this theoretical framework, linguistic expressions are generated by optimally efficient derivations that must satisfy the conditions that hold on interface levels, the only levels of linguistic representation. The interface levels provide instructions to two types of performance systems, articulatory-perceptual and conceptual-intentional. All syntactic conditions, then, express properties of these interface levels, reflecting the interpretive requirements of language and keeping to very restricted conceptual resources. In the preface to this edition, Chomsky emphasizes that the minimalist approach developed in the book and in subsequent work "is a program, not a theory." With this book, Chomsky built on pursuits from the earliest days of generative grammar to formulate a new research program that had far-reaching implications for the field.
9,104 citations
TL;DR: The Descent of Man, and Selection in relation to Sex as mentioned in this paper, by Charles Darwin, &c. In two volumes. Pp. 428, 475, as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: I. IF Mr. Darwin had closed his rich series of contributions to Science by the publication of the “Origin of Species,“he would have made an epoch in Natural History like that which Socrates made in philosophy, or Harvey in medicine. The theory identified with his name has stimulated ethnological and anatomical inquiries in every direction; it has been largely adopted and followed out by naturalists in this country and America, but most of all in the great work-room of modern science, whence a complete literature on “Darwinismus“has sprung up, and there disciples have appeared who stand in the same relation to their master as Muntzer and the Anabaptists did to Luther. Like most great advances in knowledge, the theory of Evolution found everything ripe for it. This is shown by the well-known fact that Mr. Wallace arrived at the same conclusion as to the origin of species while working in the Eastern Archipelago, and scarcely less so by the manner in which the theory has been worked out by men so distinguished as Mr. Herbert Spencer and Prof. Haeckel. But it was known when the “Origin of Species “was published, that instead of being the mere brilliant hypothesis of a man of genius, of which the proofs were to be furnished and the fruits gathered in by his successors, it was really only a summary of opinions based upon the most extensive and long-continued researches. Its author did not simply open a new province for future travellers to explore, he had already surveyed it himself, and the present volumes show him still at the head of his followers. They are written in a more popular style than those on "Animals and Plants under Domestication,“as they deal with subjects of more general interest; but all the great qualities of industry and accuracy in research, of fertility in framing hypotheses, and of impartiality in judgment, are as apparent in this as in Mr. Darwin's previous works. To one who bears in mind the too frequent tone of the controversies these works have excited, the turgid rhetoric and ignorant presumption of those "who are not of his school -or any school,“and the still more lamentable bad taste which mars the writings of Vogt and even occasionally of Haeckel, it is very admirable to see the calmness and moderation (for which philosophical would be too low an epithet) with which the author handles his subject. If prejudice can be conciliated, it will surely be by a book like this. The Descent of Man, and Selection in relation to Sex. By Charles Darwin, &c. In two volumes. Pp. 428, 475. (Murray, 1871.)
4,740 citations
Book•
01 Jan 1995
TL;DR: This book discusses the origins of societies, development and evolution, and the development of spatial patterns in simple organisms.
Abstract: List of Tables Preface 1. Introduction 2. What is Life? 3. Chemical evolution 4. The evolution of templates 5. The chicken and egg problem 6. The origin of translation and the genetic code 7. The origin of protocells 8. The origin of eukaryotes 9. The origin of sex and the nature of species 10. Intragenomic conflict 11. Symbiosis 12. Development in simple organisms 13. Gene regulation and cell heredity 14. The development of spatial patterns 15. Development and evolution 16. The origins of societies 17. The origins of language References Index
3,866 citations