P Lieberman, The Biology and Evolution of Language, Harvard, 1984.  Home/Search   Document Not in Database   Summary   Related Articles   Check

....variable from language to language, is always a small discrete set. This combination of discrete and continuous is characteristic of perception. It is certainly a psychophysical reality: for example experiments show that our perceptions lock onto one or another phoneme, resisting ambiguity (see [L], Ch.8, esp. p.176) But it shows itself more objectively in the low level statistics of natural signals. Take almost any class of continuous realvalued signals s(t) generated by the world and compile a histogram of their changes x = s(t #t) s(t) over some fixed time interval #t. This ....

P Lieberman, The Biology and Evolution of Language, Harvard, 1984.

.... the suggestion that a language faculty could have evolved by means of Darwinian natural selection (see e.g. 14] 32] Another critique, for example, agrees with Chomsky that a universal grammar could not have evolved by natural selection, because a universal grammar does not show enough variety [27]. Variety is one of the fundamental principles of natural selection [10] Lieberman [27] though, claims that language mechanisms must have been evolved by means of natural selection. In the next section I will give a brief overview of the claims made by Chomsky and discuss some critiques that ....

.... selection (see e.g. 14] 32] Another critique, for example, agrees with Chomsky that a universal grammar could not have evolved by natural selection, because a universal grammar does not show enough variety [27] Variety is one of the fundamental principles of natural selection [10] Lieberman [27], though, claims that language mechanisms must have been evolved by means of natural selection. In the next section I will give a brief overview of the claims made by Chomsky and discuss some critiques that has been raised. In particular, I will discuss the critique posed by Pinker and Bloom ....

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Lieberman, P. (1984) The biology and evolution of language. Harvard University Press.

....(which generalizes) from a finite presentation of examples. In its broadest formulation it involves accounting for the psychogical and linguistic facts of native language acquisition by human children, or even the acquisition of language itself by Homo Sapiens through natural selection (Lieberman, 1984; Pinker Bloom, 1990) The problem has become specialized across many scientific disciplines, and there is a voluminous literature. Mathematical and computational theorists are concerned with the basic questions and definitions of language learning (Gold, 1967) with understanding the complexity ....

Lieberman, P. (1984). The Biology and Evolution of Language. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

....neuroscience, and anthropology. It stresses that hypothesized neural mechanisms for language should be consistent with what we already know about brain function and cognitive evolution. One of the things we know is that full blown language is a recent phenomenon, not more than 200,000 years old (Lieberman 1984). Advanced cognition is much older because Homo erectus was already making stone tools, hunting in groups, using fire, and building shelters 1.5 million years ago (Donald 1991) This implies that the evolution of language may have depended on the prior existence of a rich cognitive structure. One ....

....function that originally served one purpose is recruited for a new one. For example, the lungs evolved from the swim bladders of fish through a process of preadaptation. In the case of language, the likely preadapted neural mechanisms are those for sensory perception and motor action (Kimura 1979; Lieberman 1984). These are the most basic functions of any nervous system because an organism must be able to sense relevant changes in its environment and make appropriate motor responses in order to survive. They are related to language in that language includes both a sensory component (speech comprehension) ....

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Lieberman, Philip (1984). The biology and evolution of language. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

....that is likely to be central in particular the problem of determining what meaning a signal is intended to convey. 1 The learning barrier There is a long standing tradition of treating the evolution of human language as being roughly synonymous with the evolution of syntax (Bickerton, 1981; Lieberman, 1984; Pinker and Bloom, 1990; Newmeyer, 1991) This position presumably reflects the assumption that, since other animals possess vocabulary like systems of communication, all that is left to be explained is how humans evolved the ability to use syntactic structures. Other species, such as the vervet ....

Lieberman, P. (1984). The biology and evolution of language. Havard University Press.

....sees in the evolution of such complex gestures a basis for the mental organization of grammatical phrases and sentences. Such proposals do not go beyond such simple grammatical relationships as serial ordering of elements. Representative works in this vein are Calvin (1983) Kimura (1979) and Lieberman (1984). Interestingly, Chomsky s (1959) influential review of Skinner s Verbal Behavior also pointed to the relevance of serial order in behavior, specifically to Lashley s (1951) work. Vocal tracts. Human vocal tracts differ significantly in shape from those of chimpanzees, allowing us to produce a ....

....Verbal Behavior also pointed to the relevance of serial order in behavior, specifically to Lashley s (1951) work. Vocal tracts. Human vocal tracts differ significantly in shape from those of chimpanzees, allowing us to produce a range of distinct sounds that chimpanzees are not capable of. Lieberman (1992, 1984, 1975) is the most prominent exponent of this topic. Lieberman s work also argues that the Neanderthal vocal tract was incapable of articulating the range of modern human speech sounds. This view has recently been challenged by Arensburg and co workers (1989, 1990) and Duchlin (1990) Aiello (in ....

Lieberman, Philip, (1984) The Biology and Evolution of Language, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

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Lieberman, P. (1984) "The Biology and Evolution of Language" Harvard University Press.

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Lieberman, P. (1984) The Biology and Evolution of Language. Cambridge, Ma: Harvard University Press.

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