The historical origins of natural language cannot be observed directly. We can, however,
study systems that support language and we can also develop models that explore the …

Recent progress in artificial intelligence provides the opportunity to ask the question of what
is unique about human intelligence, but with a new comparison class. I argue that we can …

We introduce an experimental paradigm for studying the cumulative cultural evolution of
language. In doing so we provide the first experimental validation for the idea that cultural …

To properly understand behavior, we must obtain both ultimate and proximate explanations.
Put briefly, ultimate explanations are concerned with why a behavior exists, and proximate …

Human language arises from biological evolution, individual learning, and cultural
transmission, but the interaction of these three processes has not been widely studied. We …

How recurrent typological patterns, or universals, emerge from the extensive diversity found
across the world's languages constitutes a central question for linguistics and cognitive …

A word like Huh?–used as a repair initiator when, for example, one has not clearly heard
what someone just said–is found in roughly the same form and function in spoken …

Languages are transmitted from person to person and generation to generation via a
process of iterated learning: people learn a language from other people who once learned …

This book explores the usage-based claim that high usage frequency leads to the
entrenchment of complex words in the minds of language users. To probe the correlation …

For many years the evolution of language has been seen as a disreputable topic, mired in
fanciful “just so stories” about language origins. However, in the last decade a new synthesis …