Highlights•Key design features of language can be explained as the result of cultural
evolution.•Experiments have found that structure emerges through transmission and …

Digital media have today an enormous diffusion, and their influence on the behavior of a
vast part of the human population can hardly be underestimated. In this review I propose that …

Cultural evolution studies are characterized by the notion that culture evolves accordingly to
broadly Darwinian principles. Yet how far the analogy between cultural and genetic …

Both language and genes evolve by transmission over generations with opportunity for
differential replication of forms. The understanding that gene frequencies change at random …

The extent to which larger populations enhance cumulative cultural evolution (CCE) is
contentious. We report a large-scale experiment (n= 543) that investigates the CCE of …

Linguistic universals arise from the interaction between the processes of language learning
and language use. A test case for the relationship between these factors is linguistic …

Language is the primary repository and mediator of human collective knowledge. A central
question for evolutionary linguistics is the origin of the combinatorial structure of language …

Why are languages the way they are? The biases and constraints that explain why
languages display the traits they do—instead of other possible ones—include human …

Languages change over time, driven by creation of new words and cultural pressure to
optimize communication. Programming languages resemble written language but …

It is generally believed that when a linguistic item acquires a new meaning, its overall
frequency of use rises with time with an S-shaped growth curve. Yet, this claim has only …