The mystery of language evolution
@article{Hauser2014TheMO, title={The mystery of language evolution}, author={Marc D. Hauser and Charles D. Yang and Robert C. Berwick and Ian Tattersall and Michael J. Ryan and Jeffrey Watumull and Noam Chomsky and Richard C. Lewontin}, journal={Frontiers in Psychology}, year={2014}, volume={5} }
Understanding the evolution of language requires evidence regarding origins and processes that led to change. In the last 40 years, there has been an explosion of research on this problem as well as a sense that considerable progress has been made. We argue instead that the richness of ideas is accompanied by a poverty of evidence, with essentially no explanation of how and why our linguistic computations and representations evolved. We show that, to date, (1) studies of nonhuman animals…
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