22 Nov
2017
22 Nov
'17
10:01 a.m.
The CEU Department of Cognitive Science and the Social Mind Center cordially invites you
to its talk by
Kenny Smith<https://www.ed.ac.uk/profile/kenny-smith> (School of Philosophy,
Psychology and Language Sciences; University of Edinburgh)
Date: Wednesday, November 22, 2017 - 17:00-18:30
Location: Department of Cognitive Science, CEU, Oktober 6 St. 7, room 101
Language learning, language use, and the evolution of linguistic structure
Language is a product of learning in individuals, and universal structural features of
language presumably reflect properties of the way in which we learn. But language is not
necessarily a direct reflection of properties of individual learners: languages are
culturally-transmitted systems, which persist in populations via a repeated cycle of
learning and use, where learners learn from linguistic data which represents the
communicative behaviour of other individuals who learnt their language in the same way.
Languages evolve as a result of their cultural transmission, and are therefore the product
of a potentially complex interplay between the biases of human language learners, the
communicative functions which language serves, and the ways in which languages are
transmitted in populations. In this talk I will present a series of experiments, based
around artificial language learning, dyadic interaction and iterated learning paradigms,
which allow us to explore the relationship between learning and use in shaping linguistic
structure; I will finish with an experimental study looking at cultural evolution in
non-human primates, which suggests that systematic structure may be an inevitable outcome
of cultural transmission, rather than a reflection of uniquely human learning biases.
We are looking forward to see you at the talk!
Cognitive Science Events at CEU: http://cognitivescience.ceu.hu/events
Social Mind Center Events at CEU: http://socialmind.ceu.edu/events
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