How seriously should we take Minimalist syntax?
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Journal Article↗
Biomedical subjects
Morten H. Christiansen
Publications and source records attributed to Morten H. Christiansen.
Language evolution: consensus and controversies.
Why is language the way it is? How did language come to be this way? And why is our species alone in having complex language? These are old unsolved questions that have seen a renaissance in the dramatic recent growth in research being published on the origins and evolution of human language. This review provides a broad overview of some of the important current work in this area. We highlight new methodologies (such as computational modeling), emerging points of consensus (such as the importance of pre-adaptation), and the major remaining controversies (such as gestural origins of language). We also discuss why language evolution is such a difficult problem, and suggest probable directions research may take in the near future.
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Sequential learning in non-human primates.
Sequential learning plays a role in a variety of common tasks, such as human language processing, animal communication, and the learning of action sequences. In this article, we investigate sequential learning in non-human primates from a comparative perspective, focusing on three areas: the learning of arbitrary, fixed sequences; statistical learning; and the learning of hierarchical structure. Although primates exhibit many similarities to humans in their performance on sequence learning tasks, there are also important differences. Crucially, non-human primates appear to be limited in their ability to learn and represent the hierarchical structure of sequences. We consider the evolutionary implications of these differences and suggest that limitations in sequential learning may help explain why non-human primates lack human-like language.
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