Deacon, T. (1997). The Symbolic Species - The Co-Evolution of Language and the Human Brain. Penguin.  Home/Search   Document Not in Database   Summary   Related Articles   Check

....then of instantiating the parameters of the sets of built in rules. The second, non nativist approach favors the idea that infants language development results from complex learning skills, applied to general cognition including that of language. These skills are the product of evolution [34, 38, 39] and of development [1, 40, 41] This approach assumes that humans are given general learning abilities 3 This is a very controversial subject. For instance, people argue that some type of apes might be capable of simple forms of language. Their argumentation is based, e.g. on the successful ....

.... Their argumentation is based, e.g. on the successful experiment of Savage Rumbaugh [30] at teaching chimpanzees a basic lexicon, on the studies of parrots amazing ability of reproducing human speech [31] and that of whales complicated songs [32] For some insight into this debate, see e.g. [33, 34, 35]. for combinatorial association, which are then applied to map words and meanings and to produce combinations of words such as to satisfy any grammatical rules (rather than only a universal one) 34, 42, 43] The two above approaches give only a cognitivist account of language development. ....

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T. Deacon. Symbolic Species: the Co-Evolution of Language and the Human Brain. General Science, 1997.

....out and usefully studied in isolation. Our argument includes elements derived from a condensation and integration of works by a number of researchers, including but not limited to: Wright, Diamond, Dawkins, Dennett, Deacon, and Tarnas [Wright, 1995; Diamond, 1991; Dawkins, 1996; Dennett, 1993; Deacon, 1997; Tarnas, 1991] 2.2.1 REPRESENTATION Neurologists distinguish between three types of reference, or levels of representation iconic, indexical and symbolic [Deacon, 1997] Iconic representation is by similarity to stimulus, in terms of salient sensed features. Indexical reference is ....

....limited to: Wright, Diamond, Dawkins, Dennett, Deacon, and Tarnas [Wright, 1995; Diamond, 1991; Dawkins, 1996; Dennett, 1993; Deacon, 1997; Tarnas, 1991] 2.2. 1 REPRESENTATION Neurologists distinguish between three types of reference, or levels of representation iconic, indexical and symbolic [Deacon, 1997]. Iconic representation is by similarity to stimulus, in terms of salient sensed features. Indexical reference is correlation between icons. All animals are capable of iconic and indexical representation to varying degrees. Even insects probably have limited indexical capabilities. For example, ....

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Deacon, Terrance, "The Symbolic Species: The co-evolution of language and the human brain", Penguin Books, ISBN 0-713-99188-7, 1997.

....or Grab Kanzi . This experimental evidence suggests a possible role of combinatorial syntax in the early stages of language evolution. Modeling of the evolution of syntactic languages, and their reference to animal language studies, is related to the problem of symbol acquisition. Deacon [3] states that the main difference between animal communication and human language relies on the acquisition of symbolic references, and in particular on the fact that animals have problems acquiring symbolic associations. Animals only learn associations between meanings and words through ....

....main actions ( avoid all toadstools, approach all edible mushrooms) and the other symbol is used for distinguishing between the three categories of edible mushrooms. In the introduction the problem of symbol acquisition in the evolution of animal communication and human languages was discussed [3]. Human languages are characterized by the fact that learned words (symbols) have double associations. One association is between the word and its semantic referent (which has a direct link to the world s object or event) The second type of association is between the symbol itself and other ....

Deacon T.W. (1997). The symbolic species: The coevolution of language and human brain, London: Penguin.

....are some flaws in this conception. Essentially these systems manipulate tokens that have no intrinsic meaning. As Deacon writes, Part of the danger in current computer metaphors comes from our tendency to call typographical characters symbols , as though their referential power was intrinsic [Deacon, 1997] pp443. The tokens only become symbols gain meaning when they are grounded in a physical context. They can only be interpreted in relation to the physical things to which they refer (possibly indirectly) Therefore, there are two possible groundings, or meanings, for the tokens in the ....

....systems are impoverished and very different from that of humans. Hence, the two meanings usually do not accord, despite the best efforts of the designer. 4. 2 Representation Neurologists distinguish between three types of reference, or levels of representation iconic, indexical and symbolic [Deacon, 1997]. Iconic representation is by similarity to stimulus, in terms of salient sensed features. Indexical reference is correlation or association between icons. All animals are capable of iconic and indexical representation to varying degrees. Even insects probably have limited indexical capabilities. ....

Deacon, Terrance, "The Symbolic Species: The co-evolution of language and the human brain", Penguin Books, ISBN 0-713-99188-7, 1997.

....neuroscience, which now must account for how such systems could have evolved, and how they can develop from a limited amount of genetic material. This seems to be even more of a problem than explaining language acquisition, so such models of language acquisition are extremely problematic (Deacon, 1997). Elman (1991, 1993) presents a very different model of syntactic acquisition, which begins learning with only a minimum of language specific knowledge. In fact the only way in which the model initially has any domain specific knowledge is though the built in architecture of the network, which ....

....has been successful in learning, the learning mechanism may seem psychologically implausible. Certainly the brain does not run a serial program of the kind used here, but appears in fact to be a self organising system, where no part of the brain is in overall control (McGonigle Chalmers, 1998; Deacon, 1997). Also, people do not memorise all the sentences they have ever heard so that they can keep reanalysing them in the search for the shortest representation. Connectionist programs such as those of Elman (1991, 1993) and Christiansen Chater (1994) do however seem psychologically plausible, because ....

Deacon, T. W. (1997). The Symbolic Species: The Co-evolution of Language and the Human Brain. London: Allen Lane the Penguin Press.

....of each constituent action. Vision certainly works on a compositional principle, with a complex picture being built up from a host of sensory inputs. 7 For some other work on the co evolution of languages as social objects and brains as hosts to linguistic competence, see the later chapters of Deacon (1997) and Hurford (1998) Speed The simulations reported here converge on coordinated languages with syntactic rules much faster than those described by Kirby (this volume) and Batali (this volume) This is due to the far greater power attributed to individuals in this simulation, inherent especially ....

Deacon, Terrence, 1997 The Symbolic Species: The co-evolution of language and the human brain , Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, London.

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Deacon, T. (1997). The Symbolic Species - The Co-Evolution of Language and the Human Brain. Penguin.

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Deacon, T.W. (1997). The Symbolic Species: The Coevolution of Language and Human Brain, London: Penguin.

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