Linguistic Evolution through Language Acquisition

A study of how children acquire language and how this affects language change over generations.

Ted Briscoe (Edited by)

9780521662994, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 8 August 2002

360 pages, 10 tables
23.6 x 16.1 x 3 cm, 0.65 kg

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

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.

1. Introduction Ted Briscoe
2. Learned systems of arbitrary reference: the foundation of human linguistic uniqueness Michael Oliphant
3. Bootstrapping grounded word semantics Luc Steels
4. Linguistic structure and the evolution of words Robert Worden
5. The negotiation and acquisition of recursive grammars as a result of competition among exemplars John Batali
6. Learning, bottlenecks and the evolution of recursive syntax Simon Kirby
7. Theories of cultural evolution and their application to language change Partha Niyogi
8. The learning guided evolution of natural language William J. Turkel
9. Grammatical acquisition and linguistic selection Ted Briscoe
10. Expression/induction models of language evolution: dimensions and issues James R. Hurford.

Subject Areas: Language acquisition [CFDC]