What is Stable Enough for Language to Evolve ans Still be Learnable?
Professor Roger Wales and Dr Chris Davis
Human language enables precise communication via propositional structures. This
is the case despite the relatively rapid rate of change of language within an
historical framework. The talk will consider how this feature of communication
may have evolved and be learnable. It will be suggested that two adaptive
pressures need to be jointly considered: the utility of precise expression
(e.g., the ability to know who did what to whom) and how language structures
are transmitted via the minds of children. We note that evolutionary arguments
require that the issues of intensity of selection pressure, the stability of
neural processing conditions and the invariance of reponses need to be
considered. In discussing what may be constant and consistent in language while
being processed by the same kinds of brain structures we will consider the
suggestion of Pulvermuller (1999) that cell assembles for "action" and
"perception" words are associated with modality related channels. In terms of
learnablity we will consider what miminalist syntax and optomality theory have
to offer, and try relate this discussion to empirical aspects of language
acquisition and function.
Pulvermuller F. (1999). Words in the brain's language. Behavioral and Brain
Science, 22, 253-336