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Cultural evolution: implications for understanding the human language faculty and its evolution

Cognition and Communication Research Centre, Division of Psychology, Northumbria UniversityNorthumberland Building, Northumberland Road, Newcastle NE1 8ST, UK

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Simon Kirby

Language Evolution and Computation Research Unit, School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, University of EdinburghDugald Stewart Building, 3 Charles Street, Edinburgh, EH8 9AD, UK

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Kenny Smith

Cognition and Communication Research Centre, Division of Psychology, Northumbria UniversityNorthumberland Building, Northumberland Road, Newcastle NE1 8ST, UK

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Simon Kirby

Language Evolution and Computation Research Unit, School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, University of EdinburghDugald Stewart Building, 3 Charles Street, Edinburgh, EH8 9AD, UK

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Published:19 September 2008https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2008.0145

Abstract

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.

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This Issue
12 November 2008
Volume 363Issue 1509
Theme Issue ‘Cultural transmission and the evolution of human behaviour’ compiled by Kenny Smith, Michael L. Kalish, Thomas L. Griffiths and Stephan Lewandowsky
Article Information
- DOI:https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2008.0145
- PubMed:18801718
- Published by:Royal Society
- Print ISSN:0962-8436
- Online ISSN:1471-2970
History:
Published online19/09/2008
Published in print12/11/2008
Copyright and usage:
© 2008 The Royal Society

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- evolution

Cultural evolution: implications for understanding the human language faculty and its evolution

Abstract

References

This Issue