In 2007, Dan Dediu and Bob Ladd published a paper claiming there was a non-spurious link between the non-derived alleles of ASPM and Microcephalin and tonal languages. The key idea emerging from this research is one where certain alleles may bias language acquisition or processing, subsequently shaping the development of a language within a population […]

Mirrored from A Replicated Typo It’s long since been established that demography drives evolutionary processes (see Hawks, 2008 for a good overview). Similar attempts are also being made to describe cultural (Shennan, 2000; Henrich, 2004; Richerson & Boyd, 2009) and linguistic (Nettle, 1999a; Wichmann & Homan, 2009; Vogt, 2009) processes by considering the effects of […]

Cultural differences are often attributed to events far removed from genetics. The basis for this belief is often based on the assertion that if you take an individual, at birth, from one society and implant them in another, then they will generally grow up to become well-adjusted to their adopted culture. Whilst this is more […]

Most of you in the science blogosphere have probably come across Razib’s recent post on linguistic diversity and poverty. The basic argument being that linguistic homogeneity is good for economic development and general prosperity. I was quite happy to let the debate unfold and limit my stance on the subject to the following few sentences […]

I always remember 2008 as the year when the entire UK media descended upon the former mining town of Bridgend. The reason: over the course of two years, 24 young people, most of whom were between the ages of 13 and 17, decided to commit suicide. At the time I was working in Bridgend, so […]

For me, recent computational accounts of language evolution provide a compelling rationale that cultural, as opposed to biological, evolution is fundamental in understanding the design features of language. The basis for this rests on the simple notion of language being not only a conveyor of cultural information, but also a socially learned and culturally transmitted […]

Throughout much of our history language was transitory, existing only briefly within its speech community. The invention of writing systems heralded a way of recording some of its recent history, but for the most part linguists lack the stone tools archaeologists use to explore the early history of ancient technological industries. The question of how […]

Here is a far-reaching and crucially relevant question for those of us seeking to understand the evolution of culture: Is there any relationship between population size and tool kit diversity or complexity? This question is important because, if met with an affirmative answer, then the emergence of modern human culture may be explained by changes […]

How does natural selection account for language? Darwin wrestled with it, Chomsky sidestepped it, and Pinker claimed to solve it. Discerning the evolution of language is therefore a much sought endeavour, with a vast number of explanations emerging that offer a plethora of choice, but little in the way of consensus. This is hardly new, […]

For those of you familiar with the formal mathematical models of cultural evolution (Cavalli-Sforza & Feldman, 1981; Boyd & Richerson, 1985), you’ll know there is a substantive body of literature behind the process of cultural transmission. In this respect, we have a great deal of theoretical knowledge regarding the three vectors of transmission: vertical, oblique […]

Over at Babel’s Dawn, Edmund Blair Bolles has written several blog posts about the recent Evolang 2010 conference. They’re all worth reading, just to get a gist of the varying approaches taken to language evolution, with Bolles singling out talks by Morten Christiansen and Terrence Deacon as being particular highlights. Not too surprisingly, Deacon is […]

It is well documented that Thomas Robert Malthus’ An Essay on the Principle of Population greatly influenced both Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace’s independent conception of their theory of natural selection. In it, Malthus puts forward his observation that the finite nature of resources is in conflict with the potentially exponential rate of reproduction, […]

For those of you more interested in listening rather than reading, then the journal Language Learning has a load of podcasts about language as a complex adaptive system. If you fancy some reading, here is the position paper by the Five Graces group. Below is the abstract: Language has a fundamentally social function. Processes of […]

The Guardian has a great extract from Alex Bellos‘ new book Alex’s Adventures in Numberland. Besides sounding like the title to a mathematician’s experimentation with LSD, the book dedicates a section (the abstract in the Guardian) on the work of  a linguist, Pierre Pica, and his discovery that the Munduruku tribe only count up to […]

I’m always interested in ways of using social networking sites as massive pools of data for researchers to mine. So on that note check out The Adventures of Auck‘s post on Cultural Variation and Social Networks. The post is more of a rumination, accompanied by some simple statistical analyses, than a detailed exposition. But it […]

For some time now, evolutionary biologists have used phylogenetics. It is a well-established, powerful set of tools that allow us to test evolutionary hypotheses. More recently, however, these methods are being imported to analyse linguistic and cultural phenomena. For instance, the use of phylogenetics has led to observations that languages evolve in punctuational bursts, explored […]

When examining the dispersal of Pleistocene hominins, one of the more fascinating debates concern the patterns of biological and technological evolution in East Asia and other regions of the Old World. One suggestion emerging from palaeoanthropological research places a demarcation between these two regions in the form of a geographical division known as the Movius […]

Not only do Dolphins have the ability to use marine sponges as foraging tools, they now also emit Chi according to a BBC article: Humans do seem to feel a sense of kinship with dolphins, intelligent, playful, talkative creatures that they are. And separate research shows people feel the benefit from getting up close and […]

Terrence Deacon and Ursula Goodenough have written a great article on the evolution of symbolic language. I’m mentioning it because they make two particularly interesting points. First point: Language is in effect an emergent function, not some prior function that just required fine-tuning. Our inherited (“instinctive”) vocalizations, such as laughter, shrieks of fright, and cries […]

On the basis of recent Genome-wide association research, a review by Plomin et al. (2009) predicts that, in line with R.A. Fisher’s reconciliation of Mendelian inheritance and quantitative genetics, investigations “on polygenic liabilities will eventually lead to a focus on quantitative dimensions rather than qualitative disorders”. Basically, they are proposing a shift in thinking: moving […]