The role of interactional and cognitive mechanisms in the evolution of (proto)language(s)

Pleyer, Michael

doi:10.1016/j.lingua.2022.103458

Cited by 8 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 87 publications

(120 reference statements)

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“…For example, male baboon calls are more similar to calls of males they interacted frequently with when compared to males they interacted with less frequently (Fischer et al 2020). This also opens up the exciting possibility that processes of entrenchment and precursors of conventionalisation (Schmid 2020;Pleyer 2023) operate in animal communication.…”

Section: Learnabilitymentioning

confidence: 95%

“…This sociocognitive infrastructure for cooperation has been argued to represent a foundational, 'species-unique contribution to the language acquisition process' (Ibbotson 2020: 116). Another important aspect of this sociocognitive infrastructure for cooperation is that it includes a propensity for cultural learning and cumulative cultural evolution (Tomasello 1999), of which language evolution and change are prime examples (Pleyer 2023). Cumulative cultural evolution, based on the cooperative infrastructure for cooperation, therefore seems to be a foundational process in how language evolved.…”

Section: Cooperation and Communication: The Joint Attention Hypothesismentioning

confidence: 99%

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Cognitive Linguistics and Language Evolution

Pleyer,

Hartmann

2024

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The evolution of language has developed into a large research field. Two questions are particularly relevant for this strand of research: firstly, how did the human capacity for language emerge? And secondly, which processes of cultural evolution are involved both in the evolution of human language from non-linguistic communication and in the continued evolution of human languages? Much research on language evolution that addresses these two questions is highly compatible with the usage-based approach to language pursued in cognitive linguistics. Focusing on key topics such as comparing human language and animal communication, experimental approaches to language evolution, and evolutionary dynamics in language, this Element gives an overview of the current state-of-the-art of language evolution research and discusses how cognitive linguistics and research on the evolution of language can cross-fertilise each other. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

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Section: Learnabilitymentioning

confidence: 95%

Section: Cooperation and Communication: The Joint Attention Hypothesismentioning

confidence: 99%

Cognitive Linguistics and Language Evolution

Pleyer,

Hartmann

2024

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“…In addition, these studies also allow us to address the crucial question of how the individual level as well as the population level interact in the emergence of structure. Such structure first emerges in individual interactions and instances of language use, then a) becomes increasingly entrenched in the minds of language users, and b) spreads through communities of practice and becomes conventionalized over time (Pleyer 2023;Schmid 2020). One particularly fruitful approach to investigate this process is by relating changes at the community level to changes on the individual level, as attested in high-resolution corpora that allow for tracking changes in individuals' language use through time, such as the 90 million word corpus of Early Modern Multiloquent Authors (EMMA, Petré et al 2019).…”

Section: What Can Corpus Linguistics Tell Us About Language Evolution?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Corpus-based Approaches to Evolutionary Dynamics in Language

Hartmann,

Pleyer

2024

Preprint

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Pragmatic-interactional aspects of present-day language use as well as historical language change have come to be regarded as an important source of evidence for theories of language evolution. Corpora, i.e. collections of authentic language data, are an important resource for studying both of those aspects of linguistic dynamics. This chapter gives an overview of corpus-based approaches to language change and their implications for evolutionary linguistics. In the first part of the chapter, we outline the basic principles of corpus linguistics, discussing the notion of corpus itself as well as the scope of corpus-linguistic approaches. In the second part, we review representative case studies that show how corpus studies can be used to approach questions about the dynamics of language in interaction on the one hand, and in historical language change on the other.

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“…The requirements of dealing with social (rather than ecological) information would thus have been the main driver of the evolution of human cognition. This includes the ability to use language, which might have evolved as an all-purpose social tool to transmit social information (Dahmardeh & Dunbar, 2017;Mesoudi et al, 2006;Pleyer, 2023;Redhead & Dunbar, 2013;Wacewicz, 2015; see also Dunbar & Shultz, 2023;Shultz & Dunbar, 2022). Dunbar et al (1997) analyzed the content of 45 casual conversations held in public settings by manually recording the general topic of the speaker's utterances.…”

Section: The Social Evolution Of Human Cognition and Languagementioning

confidence: 99%

How much language use is actually on social topics: Human conversational behavior revisited

Szala,

Wacewicz,

Placiński

et al. 2024

Preprint

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Our study delves into the intricacies of human conversation within the framework of evolutionary psychology, focusing on the proportion of “social” to “non-social” topics in casual conversation. Building upon the seminal study by Dunbar et al. (1997), which posited that two-thirds of conversation gravitates around social matters, our findings indicate an even larger portion, approximately 85%, dedicated to such topics. Additionally, we provide a nuanced categorization of “social” rooted in the principles of evolutionary psychology. Post-hoc demographic analyses revealed females to be more inclined towards social discussions and more engagement in social topics among individuals aged 20–24. Similarly to Dunbar et al.’s findings, our results support theories of human evolution that highlight the importance of social interactions and information exchange and the importance of the exchange of social information in human interactions across various contexts.

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The role of interactional and cognitive mechanisms in the evolution of (proto)language(s)

Cited by 8 publications

References 87 publications

Cognitive Linguistics and Language Evolution

Cognitive Linguistics and Language Evolution

Corpus-based Approaches to Evolutionary Dynamics in Language

How much language use is actually on social topics: Human conversational behavior revisited

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