How Culture and Biology Interact to Shape Language and the Language Faculty

Topics in Cognitive Science 12 (2):690-712 (2018)
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Abstract

Smith gives an excellent overview on research in language evolution, in which he discusses several recent models of how linguistic systems and the cognitive capacities involved in language learning may have co‐evolved. He illustrates how combined pressures on language learning and communication/use produce compositionally structured languages. Once in place, a (culturally transmitted) communication system creates new selection pressures on the capacity for acquiring these systems.

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References found in this work

Aspects of the Theory of Syntax.Ann S. Ferebee - 1965 - Journal of Symbolic Logic 35 (1):167.
Natural language and natural selection.Steven Pinker & Paul Bloom - 1990 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 13 (4):707-27.
Remembering.F. C. Bartlett - 1935 - Scientia 29 (57):221.
Aspects of the Theory of Syntax.John Lyons - 1966 - Philosophical Quarterly 16 (65):393-395.
Language as shaped by the brain.Morten H. Christiansen & Nick Chater - 2008 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 31 (5):489-509.

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