ELC SIGNED
The evolution of linguistic complexity
Total Cost €
0EC-Contrib. €
0Partnership
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0ELC project word cloud
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Project "ELC" data sheet
The following table provides information about the project.
| Coordinator |
THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH
Organization address contact info |
| Coordinator Country | United Kingdom [UK] |
| Total cost | 1˙985˙570 € |
| EC max contribution | 1˙985˙570 € (100%) |
| Programme |
1. H2020-EU.1.1. (EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)) |
| Code Call | ERC-2015-CoG |
| Funding Scheme | ERC-COG |
| Starting year | 2016 |
| Duration (year-month-day) | from 2016-09-01 to 2021-08-31 |
Partnership
Take a look of project's partnership.
| # | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH | UK (EDINBURGH) | coordinator | 1˙985˙570.00 |
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Project objective
Human language is unique among the communication systems of the natural world, providing our species with an incredibly flexible and powerful open-ended system of communication. This expressive power is underpinned by linguistic structure: we construct complex meaning-bearing utterances according to a set of rules and regularities which are conventionalised among speakers of a language. In my previous work I have shown that these fundamental structural features of language can be explained as a consequence of cultural evolution: structure evolves gradually as language is passed down through generations via learning and shaped by its repeated use for communication, in a process known as iterated learning.
However, existing modelling and experimental treatments of iterated learning are limited in that they focus on the evolution of simple languages which permit expression of a relatively small and fixed set of concepts. Real human languages are enormously complex, both in the expressive power they afford and the rich and complex set of structural devices they provide for conveying meaning. In this project I seek to address this major outstanding question in evolutionary linguistics: why is language complex? I will tackle this daunting question by exploring two subsidiary questions: when and how does linguistic complexity facilitate acquisition, and how do expressive power and linguistic complexity evolve as a result of language transmission and use? Answering these questions will require an ambitious programme of modelling and experimental work, covering acquisition in individual adults and children, language use in interaction, and language evolution in populations. I seek to substantially advance our understanding of the cultural evolution of language by exploring how learning, expressive pressures on language use, and social complexity drive the evolution of linguistic complexity.
Publications
| year | authors and title | journal | last update |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 |
C. Cuskley, S. Frank, K. Smith From wugged to wug: Reverse generalisation of stems from novel past tense verbs published pages: , ISSN: , DOI: |
Proceedings of the 41st Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society | 2020-01-28 |
| 2019 |
Carmen Saldana, Joël Fagot, Simon Kirby, Kenny Smith, Nicolas Claidière High-fidelity copying is not necessarily the key to cumulative cultural evolution: a study in monkeys and children published pages: 20190729, ISSN: 0962-8452, DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2019.0729 |
Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 286/1904 | 2020-01-28 |
| 2019 |
T. Johnson, J. Culbertson, H. Rabagliati, K. Smith Assessing Integrative Complexity as a Measure of Morphological Learning published pages: , ISSN: , DOI: |
Proceedings of the 41st Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society | 2020-01-28 |
| 2019 |
s. Wagner, K. Smith, J. Culbertson Acquiring Agglutinating and Fusional Languages Can Be Similarly Difficult: Evidence from an Adaptive Tracking Study published pages: , ISSN: , DOI: |
Proceedings of the 41st Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society | 2020-01-28 |
| 2019 |
S. Frank, K. Smith Language stability and change in age-dependent networks published pages: , ISSN: , DOI: |
Proceedings of the 41st Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society | 2020-01-28 |
| 2019 |
Olga Fehér, Nikolaus Ritt, Kenny Smith Asymmetric accommodation during interaction leads to the regularisation of linguistic variants published pages: 104036, ISSN: 0749-596X, DOI: 10.1016/j.jml.2019.104036 |
Journal of Memory and Language 109 | 2020-01-28 |
| 2018 |
J. Culbertson, H. Jarvinen, F. Haggarty, K. Smith Do children privilege phonological cues in noun class learning? published pages: , ISSN: , DOI: |
Proceedings of the 40th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society | 2020-01-28 |
| 2018 |
S. Frank and K. Smith A model of linguistic accommodation leading to language simplification published pages: , ISSN: , DOI: |
Proceedings of the 40th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society | 2020-01-28 |
| 2018 |
Robert X.D. Hawkins, Michael Franke, Kenny Smith, Noah D. Goodman Emerging abstractions: Lexical conventions are shaped by communicative context published pages: 463-468, ISSN: , DOI: |
Proceedings of the 40th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society | 2020-01-28 |
| 2018 |
Benjamin Wilson, Michelle Spierings, Andrea Ravignani, Jutta L. Mueller, Toben H. Mintz, Frank Wijnen, Anne van der Kant, Kenny Smith, Arnaud Rey Non-adjacent Dependency Learning in Humans and Other Animals published pages: , ISSN: 1756-8757, DOI: 10.1111/tops.12381 |
Topics in Cognitive Science | 2020-01-28 |
| 2018 |
Mark Atkinson, Gregory J Mills, Kenny Smith Social Group Effects on the Emergence of Communicative Conventions and Language Complexity published pages: 1-18, ISSN: 2058-458X, DOI: 10.1093/jole/lzy010 |
Journal of Language Evolution 4/1 | 2020-01-28 |
| 2018 |
Kenny Smith How Culture and Biology Interact to Shape Language and the Language Faculty published pages: , ISSN: 1756-8757, DOI: 10.1111/tops.12377 |
Topics in Cognitive Science | 2020-01-28 |
| 2019 |
J Culbertson, H Jarvinen, F Haggarty, K Smith Children’s sensitivity to phonological and semantic cues during noun class learning: evidence for a phonological bias published pages: , ISSN: 0097-8507, DOI: |
Language | 2020-01-28 |
| 2018 |
Kenny Smith The cognitive prerequisites for language: insights from iterated learning published pages: 154-160, ISSN: 2352-1546, DOI: 10.1016/j.cobeha.2018.05.003 |
Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences 21 | 2020-01-28 |
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