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Language as a board game
I’ve just finished reading The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks. Yes, I’m a little behind the times for a geek. Anyway, I was struck by the concept of Azad in the book. The protagonist visits an...
View ArticleChris Knight Arrested
Sorry, this isn’t really Language Evolution related besides Chris Knight’s obvious connection to the subject but thought it would be of interest to readers of the blog. Last night Chris Knight and...
View ArticleThe Bilingual paradox in Language Evolution: Top down versus bottom up...
When thinking about bilingualism and language evolution, there appears to be a paradox: Children are adept at learning more than one language at a time and there are many bilingual societies in the...
View ArticleThe Language Evolution Tree: Yet more evidence
The Speculative Grammarian has published startling new findings that the Acacia Tree is central to Language Evolution. This ground-breaking work was based on my post here. Happy EvoLang deadline day!...
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Evolang Previews: Cognitive Construal, Mental Spaces, and the Evolution of...
Evolang is busy this year – 4 parallel sessions and over 50 posters. We’ll be posting a series of previews to help you decide what to go and see. If you’d like to post a preview of your work, get in...
View ArticleIn Search of the Wild Replicator
The key to the treasure is the treasure. – John Barth In view of Sean’s post about Andrew Smith’s take on linguistic replicators I’ve decided to repost this rather longish note from New Savanna. I’d...
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Language Evolution and Levels of Explanation
A somewhat contentious debate among the behavioural sciences is currently underway concerning Mayr’s division of causal explanations in evolutionary theory. Here I’m going to give you a brief rundown...
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The Oxford Handbook of Language Evolution – Book Review on Linguist List
My review of Maggie Tallerman‘s and Kathleen R. Gibson‘s “Oxford Handbook of Language Evolution” was published on Linguist List yesterday (you can read it here). Here’s my opinion in a nutshell: This...
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Jim Hurford: What is wrong, and what is right, about current theories of...
As I mentioned in my previous post, the 2012 Poznań Linguistic Meeting (PLM) features a thematic section on “Theory and evidence in language evolution research.” This section’s invited speaker was Jim...
View ArticleJim Hurford: What is wrong, and what is right, about current theories of...
This post continues my summary of Jim Hurford’s discussion of two contrasting extreme positions on language evolution in his plenary talk at the Poznan Linguistic Meeting. Here’s the summary of these...
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Berwick, Friederici, Chomsky, Bolhuis (2013): Evolution, brain, and the...
UPDATE: This paper is now a Trends in Cognitive Sciences Free Featured Article and is available for free here Noam Chomsky, who infamously stated that the field of language evolution research is “a...
View ArticleDan Dennett on Words in Cultural Evolution
I’ve been reading around in Dan Dennett’s papers and found this one, The Cultural Evolution of Words and Other Thinking Tools (Cold Spring Harbor Symp Quant Biol, Vol. LXXIV, August, 2009). To be sure,...
View ArticleBleg: Do Memes Matter to You?
For those doing or training to do academic research on linguistic and/or cultural evolution: Do memes matter to you? I’ve got the impression that the issue that I’ve been chewing on recently, the...
View ArticleDennett Upside Down Cake: Thinking About Language Evolution in the 21st Century
About two years ago Wintz placed a comment on Replicated Typo’s About page in which he lists several papers that make good background reading for someone new to the study of linguistic and cultural...
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