This book brings together work on the emergence of communication and language drawing on diverse disciplines, including linguistics, psychology, neuroscience, anthropology and computer science. Computational simulations of the emergence of phenomena associated with communication and language play a key role in illuminating some of the most significant issues, and the renewed scientific interest in language emergence has benefited greatly from research in Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science.
Starting with a road map chapter pointing to the ways in which disparate disciplines can inform and stimulate each other, this book examines the role of simulations as a novel way to express theories in science, and their contribution to the development of a new approach to the study of the emergence of communication and language.
Worldwide contributors report on the results at the forefront of this interdisciplinary field and deliver state-of-the-art research and essential reading for researchers and graduates.
Inhaltsverzeichnis
Empirical Investigations on Human Language. - Evolving Meaning: The Roles of Kin Selection, Allomothering and Paternal Care in Language Evolution. - `Needs only Analysis in Linguistic Ontogeny and Phylogeny. - Clues from Information Theory Indicating a Phased Emergence of Grammar. - Emergence of a Communication System: International Sign. - Distributed Language: Biomechanics, Functions, and the Origins of Talk. - Synthesis of Communication and Language in Artificial Systems. - The Recruitment Theory of Language Origins. - In silico Evolutionary Developmental Neurobiology and the Origin of Natural Language. - Communication in Natural and Artificial Organisms: Experiments in Evolutionary Robotics. - From Vocal Replication to Shared Combinatorial Speech Codes: A Small Step for Evolution, A Big Step for Language. - Learning and Transition of Symbols: Towards a Dynamical Model of a Symbolic Individual. - Language Change among `Memoryless Learners Simulated in Language Dynamics Equations. - The Evolution of Meaning-Space Structure through Iterated Learning. - The Emergence of Language: How to Simulate It. - Lexical Acquisition with and without Metacommunication. - Agent Based Modelling of Communication Costs: Why Information Can Be Free. - Language Change and the Inference of Meaning. - Language, Perceptual Categories and their Interaction: Insights from Computational Modelling. - Insights from Animal Communication. - Emergence of Linguistic Communication: Studies on Grey Parrots. - A Possible Role for Selective Masking in the Evolution of Complex, Learned Communication Systems. - The Natural History of Human Language: Bridging the Gaps without Magic. - Neural Substrates for String-Context Mutual Segmentation: A Path to Human Language.
