Computational and evolutionary aspects of language

by: Martin A Nowak, Natalia L Komarova, Partha Niyogi

Nature, Vol. 417, No. 6889. (6 June 2002), pp. 611-617.

View FullText article

DOI, LangEv, Nature, Pubmed, Hubmed

Reviews [Write a review of this article]

There are no reviews of this article

Find related articles from these CiteULike users

garyfeng, mauricelee, ReadingLab (group), soramame_0518

Find related articles with these CiteULike tags

computation, evolution, language, language_evolution, modeling, no-tag

Abstract

Language is our legacy. It is the main evolutionary contribution of humans, and perhaps the most interesting trait that has emerged in the past 500 million years. Understanding how darwinian evolution gives rise to human language requires the integration of formal language theory, learning theory and evolutionary dynamics. Formal language theory provides a mathematical description of language and grammar. Learning theory formalizes the task of language acquisition it can be shown that no procedure can learn an unrestricted set of languages. Universal grammar specifies the restricted set of languages learnable by the human brain. Evolutionary dynamics can be formulated to describe the cultural evolution of language and the biological evolution of universal grammar.

@article{citeulike:862630, abstract = {Language is our legacy. It is the main evolutionary contribution of humans, and perhaps the most interesting trait that has emerged in the past 500 million years. Understanding how darwinian evolution gives rise to human language requires the integration of formal language theory, learning theory and evolutionary dynamics. Formal language theory provides a mathematical description of language and grammar. Learning theory formalizes the task of language acquisition it can be shown that no procedure can learn an unrestricted set of languages. Universal grammar specifies the restricted set of languages learnable by the human brain. Evolutionary dynamics can be formulated to describe the cultural evolution of language and the biological evolution of universal grammar.}, address = {Institute for Advanced Study, Einstein Drive, Princeton, New Jersey 08540, USA. nowak@ias.edu}, author = {Nowak, Martin A. and Komarova, Natalia L. and Niyogi, Partha }, citeulike-article-id = {862630}, doi = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature00771}, issn = {0028-0836}, journal = {Nature}, keywords = {evolution, language}, month = {June}, number = {6889}, pages = {611--617}, posted-at = {2007-02-16 19:40:54}, priority = {0}, title = {Computational and evolutionary aspects of language}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature00771}, volume = {417}, year = {2002} }

RIS record

TY - JOUR ID - citeulike:862630 L3 - citeulike-article-id:862630 TI - Computational and evolutionary aspects of language JF - Nature VL - 417 IS - 6889 SP - 611 EP - 617 AD - Institute for Advanced Study, Einstein Drive, Princeton, New Jersey 08540, USA. nowak@ias.edu SN - 0028-0836 N2 - Language is our legacy. It is the main evolutionary contribution of humans, and perhaps the most interesting trait that has emerged in the past 500 million years. Understanding how darwinian evolution gives rise to human language requires the integration of formal language theory, learning theory and evolutionary dynamics. Formal language theory provides a mathematical description of language and grammar. Learning theory formalizes the task of language acquisition it can be shown that no procedure can learn an unrestricted set of languages. Universal grammar specifies the restricted set of languages learnable by the human brain. Evolutionary dynamics can be formulated to describe the cultural evolution of language and the biological evolution of universal grammar. KW - evolution KW - language AU - Nowak, Martin AU - Komarova, Natalia AU - Niyogi, Partha PY - 2002/06/06/ UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature00771 ER -

RIS BibTeX