Experiments In Cultural Language Evolution

Author : Luc Steels
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing
Page : 320 pages
File Size : 45,6 Mb
Release : 2012-02-23
Category : Computers
ISBN : 9789027274953

Get Book

Experiments in Cultural Language Evolution by Luc Steels Pdf

The fascinating question of the origins and evolution of language has been drawing a lot of attention recently, not only from linguists, but also from anthropologists, evolutionary biologists, and brain scientists. This groundbreaking book explores the cultural side of language evolution. It proposes a new overarching framework based on linguistic selection and self-organization and explores it in depth through sophisticated computer simulations and robotic experiments. Each case study investigates how a particular type of language system can emerge in a population of language game playing agents and how it can continue to evolve in order to cope with changes in ecological conditions. Case studies cover on the one hand the emergence of concepts and words for proper names, color terms, names for bodily actions, spatial terms and multi-dimensional words. The second set of experiments focuses on the emergence of grammar, specifically case grammar for expressing argument structure, functional grammar for expressing different uses of spatial relations, internal agreement systems for marking constituent structure, morphological expression of aspect, and quantifiers expressed as articles. The book is ideally suited as study material for an advanced course on language evolution and it will be of interest to anyone who wonders how human languages may have originated.

Author : Luc Steels
Publisher : Language Science Press
Page : 375 pages
File Size : 51,5 Mb
Release : 2015-05-11
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9783944675428

Get Book

The Talking Heads experiment by Luc Steels Pdf

The Talking Heads Experiment, conducted in the years 1999-2001, was the first large-scale experiment in which open populations of situated embodied agents created for the first time ever a new shared vocabulary by playing language games about real world scenes in front of them. The agents could teleport to different physical sites in the world through the Internet. Sites, in Antwerp, Brussels, Paris, Tokyo, London, Cambridge and several other locations were linked into the network. Humans could interact with the robotic agents either on site or remotely through the Internet and thus influence the evolving ontologies and languages of the artificial agents. The present book describes in detail the motivation, the cognitive mechanisms used by the agents, the various installations of the Talking Heads, the experimental results that were obtained, and the interaction with humans. It also provides a perspective on what happened in the field after these initial groundbreaking experiments. The book is invaluable reading for anyone interested in the history of agent-based models of language evolution and the future of Artificial Intelligence.

Author : Ljiljana Progovac
Publisher : Springer
Page : 86 pages
File Size : 50,6 Mb
Release : 2018-12-18
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9783030032357

Get Book

A Critical Introduction to Language Evolution by Ljiljana Progovac Pdf

This book provides a critical introduction to the current views and controversies regarding language evolution. It sheds new light on hot topics such as: How ancient is language? Did Neanderthals have some form of language? Did language evolve gradually and incrementally, through stages, or suddenly, in one leap, in all its complexity? Does language evolution involve natural selection or not? This book is essential reading for scholars and students interested in language evolution, especially those in the fields of linguistics, psychology, biology, anthropology, and neuroscience.

Author : Luc Steels
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 238 pages
File Size : 48,5 Mb
Release : 1999
Category : Electronic
ISBN : OCLC:635015732

Get Book

The Talking Heads Experiment by Luc Steels Pdf

Author : Erica A Cartmill,Seán Roberts,Heidi Lyn,Hannah Cornish
Publisher : World Scientific
Page : 592 pages
File Size : 44,5 Mb
Release : 2014-03-21
Category : Computers
ISBN : 9789814603645

Get Book

The Evolution of Language by Erica A Cartmill,Seán Roberts,Heidi Lyn,Hannah Cornish Pdf

This volume comprises refereed papers and abstracts of the 10th International Conference on the Evolution of Language (EVOLANGX), held in Vienna on 14–17th April 2014. As the leading international conference in the field, the biennial EVOLANG meeting is characterised by an invigorating, multidisciplinary approach to the origins and evolution of human language, and brings together researchers from many subject areas, including anthropology, archaeology, biology, cognitive science, computer science, genetics, linguistics, neuroscience, palaeontology, primatology and psychology. For this 10th conference, the proceedings will include a special perspectives section featuring prominent researchers reflecting on the history of the conference and its impact on the field of language evolution since the inaugural EVOLANG conference in 1996. Contents:Diachronic Processes in Language as Signaling Under Conflicting Interests (Christopher Ahern and Robin Clark)Syntactic Development in Phenotypic Space (Lluís Barceló-Coblijn and Antoni Gomila Benejam)Linguistic Animals: Understanding Language Through a Comparative Approach (Piera Filippi)Social Interaction Influences the Evolution of Cognitive Biases for Language (Seán G Roberts, Bill Thompson and Kenny Smith)Symbol Extension and Meaning Generation in Cultural Evolution for Displaced Communication (Kaori Tamura and Takashi Hashimoto)The Origins of Combinatorial Communication (Richard A Blythe and Thomas C Scott-Phillips)Social Origins of Rhythm? Synchrony and Temporal Regularity in Human Vocalization (Daniel L Bowling, Christian T Herbst and W Tecumseh Fitch)The Effect of Pitch Enhancement on Spoken Language Acquisition (Piera Filippi, Bruno Gingras and W Tecumseh Fitch)Bow-and-Arrow Technology: Mapping Human Cognition and Perhaps Language Evolution (Alexandra Regina Kratschmer, Miriam Noël Haidle and Marlize Lombard)The Cognitive Underspinnings of Metaphor as the Driving Force of Language Evolution (Andrew D M Smith and Stefan H Höfler)Model Fitting and Prediction for Language Evolution (Bill Thompson and Vanessa Ferdinand)and other papers Readership: Graduate students, academics and researchers working on the evolution of language, artificial intelligence, genetics and psychology. Key Features:Keywords:Evolution;Language;Evolang;Origin;Protolanguage

Author : Michael Pleyer,Stefan Hartmann
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 165 pages
File Size : 55,5 Mb
Release : 2024-03-28
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9781009385015

Get Book

Cognitive Linguistics and Language Evolution by Michael Pleyer,Stefan Hartmann Pdf

The evolution of language has developed into a large research field. Two questions are particularly relevant for this strand of research: firstly, how did the human capacity for language emerge? And secondly, which processes of cultural evolution are involved both in the evolution of human language from non-linguistic communication and in the continued evolution of human languages? Much research on language evolution that addresses these two questions is highly compatible with the usage-based approach to language pursued in cognitive linguistics. Focusing on key topics such as comparing human language and animal communication, experimental approaches to language evolution, and evolutionary dynamics in language, this Element gives an overview of the current state-of-the-art of language evolution research and discusses how cognitive linguistics and research on the evolution of language can cross-fertilise each other. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Author : Luc Steels,Manfred Hild
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 276 pages
File Size : 52,7 Mb
Release : 2012-02-14
Category : Computers
ISBN : 9781461430643

Get Book

Language Grounding in Robots by Luc Steels,Manfred Hild Pdf

Written by leading international experts, this volume presents contributions establishing the feasibility of human language-like communication with robots. The book explores the use of language games for structuring situated dialogues in which contextualized language communication and language acquisition can take place. Within the text are integrated experiments demonstrating the extensive research which targets artificial language evolution. Language Grounding in Robots uses the design layers necessary to create a fully operational communicating robot as a framework for the text, focusing on the following areas: Embodiment; Behavior; Perception and Action; Conceptualization; Language Processing; Whole Systems Experiments. This book serves as an excellent reference for researchers interested in further study of artificial language evolution.

Author : Daniel Dor,Danny Dor,Chris Knight,Jerome Lewis
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 452 pages
File Size : 55,9 Mb
Release : 2014
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9780199665334

Get Book

The Social Origins of Language by Daniel Dor,Danny Dor,Chris Knight,Jerome Lewis Pdf

This book presents a new perspective on the origins of language, and highlights the key role of social and cultural dynamics in driving language evolution. It considers, among other questions, the role of gesture in communication, mimesis, play, dance, and song in extant hunter-gatherer communities, and the time-frame for language evolution.

Author : Eva Zehentner
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Page : 496 pages
File Size : 45,6 Mb
Release : 2019-06-17
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9783110633856

Get Book

Competition in Language Change by Eva Zehentner Pdf

This book addresses one of the most pervasive questions in historical linguistics – why variation becomes stable rather than being eliminated – by revisiting the so far neglected history of the English dative alternation. The alternation between a nominal and a prepositional ditransitive pattern (John gave Mary a book vs. John gave a book to Mary) emerged in Middle English and is closely connected to broader changes at that time. Accordingly, the main quantitative investigation focuses on ditransitive patterns in the Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English; in addition, the book employs an Evolutionary Game Theory model. The results are approached from an ‘evolutionary construction grammar’ perspective, combining evolutionary thinking with diachronic constructionist notions, and the alternation’s emergence is interpreted as a story of constructional innovation, competition, cooperation and co-evolution. The book not only provides a thorough and detailed analysis of the history of one of the most-discussed syntactic phenomena in English, but by fusing two frameworks and employing two different methodologies also presents a highly innovative approach to a problem of relevance to historical linguistics in general.

Author : Maggie Tallerman
Publisher : OUP Oxford
Page : 448 pages
File Size : 49,8 Mb
Release : 2005-05-27
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9780191557439

Get Book

Language Origins by Maggie Tallerman Pdf

This book addresses central questions in the evolution of language: where it came from; how it relates to primate communication; how and why it evolved; how it came to be culturally transmitted; and how languages diversified. The chapters are written from the perspective of the latest work in linguistics, neuroscience, psychology, and computer science, and reflect the idea that various cognitive, physical, neurological, social, and cultural prerequisites led to the development of full human language. Some of these evolutionary changes were preadaptations for language, while others were adaptive changes allowing the development of particular linguistic characteristics. The authors consider a broad spectrum of ideas about the conditions that led to the evolution of protolanguage and full language. Some examine changes that occurred in the course of evolution to Homo sapiens; others consider how languages themselves have adapted by evolving to be learnable. Some chapters look at the workings of the brain, and others deploy sophisticated computer simulations that model such aspects as the emergence of speech sounds and the development of grammar. All make use of the latest methods and theories to probe into the origins and subsequent development of the only species that has language. The book will interest a wide range of linguists, cognitive scientists, biologists, psychologists, neuroscientists, and experts in artificial intelligence, as well as all those fascinated by issues, puzzles, and problems raised by the evolution of language.

Author : Daniel Dor,Chris Knight,Jerome Lewis
Publisher : OUP Oxford
Page : 528 pages
File Size : 55,6 Mb
Release : 2014-06-27
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9780191643125

Get Book

The Social Origins of Language by Daniel Dor,Chris Knight,Jerome Lewis Pdf

This book offers an exciting new perspective on the origins of language. Language is conceptualized as a collective invention, on the model of writing or the wheel, and the book places social and cultural dynamics at the centre of its evolution: language emerged and further developed in human communities already suffused with meaning and communication, mimesis, ritual, song and dance, alloparenting, new divisions of labour and revolutionary changes in social relations. The book thus challenges assumptions about the causal relations between genes, capacities, social communication and innovation: the biological capacities are taken to evolve incrementally on the basis of cognitive plasticity, in a process that recruits previous adaptations and fine-tunes them to serve novel communicative ends. Topics include the ability brought about by language to tell lies, that must have confronted our ancestors with new problems of public trust; the dynamics of social-cognitive co-evolution; the role of gesture and mimesis in linguistic communication; studies of how monkeys and apes express their feelings or thoughts; play, laughter, dance, song, ritual and other social displays among extant hunter-gatherers; the social nature of language acquisition and innovation; normativity and the emergence of linguistic norms; the interaction of language and emotions; and novel perspectives on the time-frame for language evolution. The contributors are leading international scholars from linguistics, anthropology, palaeontology, primatology, psychology, evolutionary biology, artificial intelligence, archaeology, and cognitive science.

Author : Luc STEELS
Publisher : Springer
Page : 331 pages
File Size : 45,7 Mb
Release : 2012-10-30
Category : Computers
ISBN : 9783642341205

Get Book

Computational Issues in Fluid Construction Grammar by Luc STEELS Pdf

This state-of-the-art-survey documents the Fluid Construction Grammar (FCG), a new formalism for the representation of lexicons and grammars, which has been used in a wide range of case studies for different languages, both for studying specific grammatical phenomena and design patterns, as for investigating language learning and language evolution. The book focuses on the many complex computational issues that arise when writing challenging real world grammars and hence emphasises depth of analysis rather than broad scope. The volume contains 13 contributions organized in 5 parts from "Basic", and "Implementation", over "Case Studies", and "Formal Analysis", up to 3 papers presenting a "Conclusion".

Author : Salikoko S. Mufwene,François Pellegrino,Christophe Coupé
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 265 pages
File Size : 50,5 Mb
Release : 2017-03-30
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9781107054370

Get Book

Complexity in Language by Salikoko S. Mufwene,François Pellegrino,Christophe Coupé Pdf

This book is about dynamical, social-interactional aspects of the emergence of complexity in language, explained by linguists, cognitivists, and modelers.

Author : Rudolf Botha,Martin Everaert
Publisher : OUP Oxford
Page : 356 pages
File Size : 44,6 Mb
Release : 2013-07-25
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9780191626470

Get Book

The Evolutionary Emergence of Language by Rudolf Botha,Martin Everaert Pdf

The book presents new and stimulating approaches to the study of language evolution and considers their implications for future research. Leading scholars from linguistics, primatology, anthroplogy, and cognitive science consider how language evolution can be understood by means of inference from the study of linked or analogous phenomena in language, animal behaviour, genetics, neurology, culture, and biology. In their introduction the editors show how these approaches can be interrelated and deployed together through their use of comparable forms of inference and the similar conditions they place on the use of evidence. The Evolutionary Emergence of Language will interest everyone concerned with this intriguing and important subject, including those in linguistics, biology, anthropology, archaeology, neurology, and cognitive science.

Author : Michael Spranger
Publisher : Language Science Press
Page : 280 pages
File Size : 44,7 Mb
Release : 2016-06-15
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9783946234142

Get Book

The evolution of grounded spatial language by Michael Spranger Pdf

This book presents groundbreaking robotic experiments on how and why spatial language evolves. It provides detailed explanations of the origins of spatial conceptualization strategies, spatial categories, landmark systems and spatial grammar by tracing the interplay of environmental conditions, communicative and cognitive pressures. The experiments discussed in this book go far beyond previous approaches in grounded language evolution. For the first time, agents can evolve not only particular lexical systems but also evolve complex conceptualization strategies underlying the emergence of category systems and compositional semantics. Moreover, many issues in cognitive science, ranging from perception and conceptualization to language processing, had to be dealt with to instantiate these experiments, so that this book contributes not only to the study of language evolution but to the investigation of the cognitive bases of spatial language as well.