A biological infrastructure for communication underlies the cultural evolution of languages
Year: 2008
Type: article
Abstract: Universal Grammar (UG) is indeed evolutionarily implausible. But if languages are just “adapted” to a large primate brain, it is hard to see why other primates do not have complex languages. The answer is that humans have evolved a specialized and uniquely human cognitive architecture, whose main function is to compute mappings between arbitrary signals and communicative intentions. This underlies the development of language in the human species.
Source: Behavioral and Brain Sciences
Authors: J. P. de Ruiter, Stephen C. Levinson
Institution: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics
Language: English
Subfield: Cultural Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2943705237