If protolanguage was a holistic system where complex meanings were conveyed using unanalysed forms, there must be some process (analysis) which delivered up the elements of modern language from this system. This paper draws on evidence from computational modelling, developmental and historical linguistics and comparative psychology to evaluate the plausibility of the analysis process. While some of the criticisms levelled at analysis can be refuted using such evidence, several areas are highlighted where further evidence is required to decide key issues. More generally, the debate over the nature of protolanguage offers a framework for developing and showcasing a modern, evidence-based evolutionary linguistics.
2012. Protolanguage and the “God particle”. Lingua 122:12 ► pp. 1308 ff.
Ellison, T. Mark & Uta Reinöhl
2022. Compositionality, Metaphor, and the Evolution of Language. International Journal of Primatology
Fleming, Luke
2017. Phoneme inventory size and the transition from monoplanar to dually patterned speech. Journal of Language Evolution 2:1 ► pp. 52 ff.
Gong, Tao, James W. Minett & William S.-Y. Wang
2009. 2009 IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation, ► pp. 1530 ff.
Gong, Tao, Lan Shuai & Bernard Comrie
2014. Evolutionary linguistics: theory of language in an interdisciplinary space. Language Sciences 41 ► pp. 243 ff.
Nowak, Iga & Giosuè Baggio
2016. The emergence of word order and morphology in compositional languages via multigenerational signaling games. Journal of Language Evolution 1:2 ► pp. 137 ff.
Steels, Luc
2011. Modeling the cultural evolution of language. Physics of Life Reviews 8:4 ► pp. 339 ff.
Sutcliffe, A. G. & D. Wang
2012. Memetic reproduction and protolanguage evolution. Memetic Computing 4:1 ► pp. 19 ff.
Sutcliffe, A. G. & D. Wang
2014. Memetic evolution in the development of proto-language. Memetic Computing 6:1 ► pp. 3 ff.
Tin, T. B.
2013. Towards creativity in ELT: the need to say something new. ELT Journal 67:4 ► pp. 385 ff.
Tin, Tan Bee
2012. Freedom, constraints and creativity in language learning tasks: new task features. Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching 6:2 ► pp. 177 ff.
Vallauri, Edoardo Lombardi & Viviana Masia
2018. Facilitating Automation in Sentence Processing: The Emergence of Topic and Presupposition in Human Communication. Topoi 37:2 ► pp. 343 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 31 march 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
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