The integration hypothesis of human language evolution and the nature of contemporary languages
Name
Miyagawa_The integration hypothesis.pdf
Size
579.4 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
c09bdc08e5056d94e7509922b6817bcd
Author(s)
Miyagawa, Shigeru
Ojima, Shiro
Berwick, Robert C.
Okanoya, Kazuo
Date Issued
June 2014
Journal
Frontiers in Psychology
Publisher
Frontiers Research Foundation
Citation
Miyagawa, Shigeru, Shiro Ojima, Robert C. Berwick, and Kazuo Okanoya. “The Integration Hypothesis of Human Language Evolution and the Nature of Contemporary Languages.” Front. Psychol. 5 (June 9, 2014).
Version
Final published version
Abstract
How human language arose is a mystery in the evolution of Homo sapiens. Miyagawa et al. (2013) put forward a proposal, which we will call the Integration Hypothesis of human language evolution, that holds that human language is composed of two components, E for expressive, and L for lexical. Each component has an antecedent in nature: E as found, for example, in birdsong, and L in, for example, the alarm calls of monkeys. E and L integrated uniquely in humans to give rise to language. A challenge to the Integration Hypothesis is that while these non-human systems are finite-state in nature, human language is known to require characterization by a non-finite state grammar. Our claim is that E and L, taken separately, are in fact finite-state; when a grammatical process crosses the boundary between E and L, it gives rise to the non-finite state character of human language. We provide empirical evidence for the Integration Hypothesis by showing that certain processes found in contemporary languages that have been characterized as non-finite state in nature can in fact be shown to be finite-state. We also speculate on how human language actually arose in evolution through the lens of the Integration Hypothesis.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Linguistics and Philosophy
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Foreign Languages and Literatures
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00564
