The DOI matches its Crossref record; 41 of the 41 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Innateness and culture in the evolution of language
Open accessAbstract
Human language arises from biological evolution, individual learning, and cultural transmission, but the interaction of these three processes has not been widely studied. We set out a formal framework for analyzing cultural transmission, which allows us to investigate how innate learning biases are related to universal properties of language. We show that cultural transmission can magnify weak biases into strong linguistic universals, undermining one of the arguments for strong innate constraints on language learning. As a consequence, the strength of innate biases can be shielded from natural selection, allowing these genes to drift. Furthermore, even when there is no natural selection, cultural transmission can produce apparent adaptations. Cultural transmission thus provides an alternative to traditional nativist and adaptationist explanations for the properties of human languages.
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“This research is important, as it shifts some of the explanatory burden for language away from natural selection for language-specific cognitive adaptations, and makes the challenge of explaining the origins of language more manageable (Smith and Kirby, 2008; Kirby et al., 2007, 2008, 2015).”
From The origins of language in teaching (2017) · cites this paper as Kirby et al., 2007
In the citing paper
“The cultural evolution of language has been studied through mathematical modeling, and researchers have established that key properties of language, for instance compositionality, could evolve in this manner (Smith and Kirby, 2008; Kirby et al. 2007).”
From The origins of language in teaching (2017) · cites this paper as Kirby et al. 2007
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“Irrespective of their origin, the effects of biases on culture tend to strengthen through repeated transmission 99,104,105 .”
From Machine culture (2023) · cites this paper as [105]
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Metadata
- Authors
- Kirby, S., Dowman, M., & Griffiths, T. L.
- Affiliations
- University of Edinburgh (GB)
- The University of Tokyo (JP)
- University of California, Berkeley (US)
- Venue
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Publisher
- National Academy of Sciences
- Published
- 2007-03-20
- Volume
- 104
- Issue
- 12
- Pages
- 5241-5245
- ISSN
- 0027-8424 (ISSN-L)
- 1091-6490
- PMC
- PMC1829293
- OpenAlex
- W2106731506
- Cited by
- 442
- References
- 41
- Citations by year
- 2026: 16 · 2025: 15 · 2024: 13 · 2023: 31 · 2022: 32 · 2021: 37 · 2020: 17 · 2019: 15 · 2018: 36 · 2017: 16 · 2016: 29 · 2015: 20 · 2014: 14 · 2013: 26 · 2012: 16
- FWCI
- 590.18
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- National Science Foundation (0544708)
- Economic and Social Research Council
- Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Cultural Studies › Language and cultural evolution
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Language and Linguistics › Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Language Development and Disorders
- Keywords
- cultural transmission, language evolution, innateness, language universals, natural selection, genetic drift, language learning, nativism, adaptationism, formal framework
- MeSH terms
- Culture, Biological Evolution, Humans, Language, Learning
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