Linguistic Evolution through Language Acquisition

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511486524

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.

'The most important contribution of this book lies in the many detailed examples of the emergence of structured representations that it offers.'

Source: Journal of Linguistics

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Linguistic Evolution through Language Acquisition

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Contents

Frontmatter
pp i-iv

Contents
pp v-vi

List of contributors
pp vii-viii

1 - Introduction
pp 1-22

2 - Learned systems of arbitrary reference: The foundation of human linguistic uniqueness
pp 23-52

3 - Bootstrapping grounded word semantics
pp 53-74

4 - Linguistic structure and the evolution of words
pp 75-110

5 - The negotiation and acquisition of recursive grammars as a result of competition among exemplars
pp 111-172

6 - Learning, bottlenecks and the evolution of recursive syntax
pp 173-204

7 - Theories of cultural evolution and their application to language change
pp 205-234

8 - The learning guided evolution of natural language
pp 235-254

9 - Grammatical acquisition and linguistic selection
pp 255-300

10 - Expression/induction models of language evolution: dimensions and issues
pp 301-344

Index
pp 345-349

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Linguistic Evolution through Language Acquisition

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