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Journal ArticleDOI

The faculty of language: what is it, who has it, and how did it evolve?

22 Nov 2002-Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science)-Vol. 298, Iss: 5598, pp 1569-1579
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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Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
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

Journal ArticleDOI
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

Journal ArticleDOI
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

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The principles-and-parameter approach has been used in this paper to account for properties of language in terms of general considerations of computational efficiency, eliminating some of the technology postulated as specific to language and providing more principled explanation of linguistic phenomena.
Abstract: The biolinguistic perspective regards the language faculty as an “organ of the body,” along with other cognitive systems. Adopting it, we expect to find three factors that interact to determine (I-) languages attained: genetic endowment (the topic of Universal Grammar), experience, and principles that are language- or even organism-independent. Research has naturally focused on I-languages and UG, the problems of descriptive and explanatory adequacy. The Principles-and-Parameters approach opened the possibility for serious investigation of the third factor, and the attempt to account for properties of language in terms of general considerations of computational efficiency, eliminating some of the technology postulated as specific to language and providing more principled explanation of linguistic phenomena

1,409 citations


Cites background from "The faculty of language: what is it..."

  • ...…explained, but in fact it is a virtual conceptual necessity;9 some version of transformational grammar seems to be the null hypothesis, 7 For discussion in a broader framework, see Hauser, Chomsky, and Fitch 2002; and for intriguing extensions, see Piattelli-Palmarini and Uriagereka, to appear....

    [...]

Journal ArticleDOI
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 faculty of language: what is it..."

  • ...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)....

    [...]

  • ...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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Journal ArticleDOI
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


Additional excerpts

  • ...DOI: 10.1126/science.298.5598.1569 , 1569 (2002); 298 Science et al....

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Book
01 May 1965
TL;DR: Generative grammars as theories of linguistic competence as discussed by the authors have been used as a theory of performance for language learning. But they have not yet been applied to the problem of language modeling.
Abstract: : Contents: Methodological preliminaries: Generative grammars as theories of linguistic competence; theory of performance; organization of a generative grammar; justification of grammars; formal and substantive grammars; descriptive and explanatory theories; evaluation procedures; linguistic theory and language learning; generative capacity and its linguistic relevance Categories and relations in syntactic theory: Scope of the base; aspects of deep structure; illustrative fragment of the base component; types of base rules Deep structures and grammatical transformations Residual problems: Boundaries of syntax and semantics; structure of the lexicon

12,225 citations

Book
24 Feb 1871
TL;DR: In this paper, secondary sexual characters of fishes, amphibians and reptiles are presented. But the authors focus on the secondary sexual characteristics of fishes and amphibians rather than the primary sexual characters.
Abstract: Part II. Sexual Selection (continued): 12. Secondary sexual characters of fishes, amphibians and reptiles 13. Secondary sexual characters of birds 14. Birds (continued) 15. Birds (continued) 16. Birds (concluded) 17. Secondary sexual characters of mammals 18. Secondary sexual characters of mammals (continued) 19. Secondary sexual characters of man 20. Secondary sexual characters of man (continued) 21. General summary and conclusion Index.

11,302 citations

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

Journal Article
TL;DR: Part I. Sexual Selection (continued): Secondary sexual characters of fishes, amphibians and reptiles, and secondarySexual characters of birds.

6,894 citations