Cultural evolution: implications for understanding the human language faculty and its evolution
Cultural evolution: implications for understanding the human language faculty and its evolution
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DOI：
10.1098/rstb.2008.0145
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发表时间：
2008-11-12
影响因子：
6.3
通讯作者：
Kirby, Simon
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Smith, Kenny;Kirby, Simon
人类语言在自然界的交流系统中是独一无二的：它是社会性学习的，由于其递归的构成结构，提供了开放的交流潜力。这种交流系统的结构可以解释为人类语言生物能力的进化或语言本身的文化进化的结果。我们认为，在一个正式模型的支持下，一种涉及文化进化的解释性解释对我们理解语言教师的生物进化有着深远的影响：在一些合理的情景下，文化进化可以保护语言教师不受选择的影响，这样就不太可能出现强烈制约语言特有学习偏见的情况。因此，我们认为，在语言能力较弱和/或具有领域通用性的人群中，语言最好被视为文化进化的结果。
Human language is unique among the communication systems of the natural world: it is socially learned and, as a consequence of its recursively compositional structure, offers open-ended communicative potential. The structure of this communication system can be explained as a consequence of the evolution of the human biological capacity for language or the cultural evolution of language itself. We argue, supported by a formal model, that an explanatory account that involves some role for cultural evolution has profound implications for our understanding of the biological evolution of the language faculty: under a number of reasonable scenarios, cultural evolution can shield the language faculty from selection, such that strongly constraining language-specific learning biases are unlikely to evolve. We therefore argue that language is best seen as a consequence of cultural evolution in populations with a weak and/or domain-general language faculty.