... by previous generations of learners to fit the domain-general biases that children bring to bear on acquisition. The approach also provides insight into the nature of language universals, and has far-reaching implications for evolutionary psychology. Bates E A Harrington J Michel J B Palethorpe S Watson C...

... language family World Atlas of Language Structures Binding Condition Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Structures creole design space ontology Hausa language universals character coupling implicational universals Bantu diachronic typology esoterogeny social selection double articulation cultural...

... change, borrowing, and putative language universals. This chapter outlines three new and related questions that could be productively tackled with computational phylogenetic methods: What drives language diversification? What drives differences in the rate of linguistic change (disparity)? Can we...

...This chapter explores the implications of an evolutionary approach for the notion that human language syntax can be explained by significantly constraining domain-specific linguistic nativism. It considers three sources of evidence that seem to validate this nativist position: universals...

...This chapter considers arguments for and against language-specific learning bias or constraint on human languages within the framework of the debate over the role of innate constraints in human language acquisition as well as the link between putative linguistic universals and convergent linguistic...

...This chapter is concerned with what discussions about type are supposed to be speaking for, i.e. what the paraphrase might be. Nominalists, in paraphrasing sentences referring to abstract objects or universals, make do with words, terminology, and other linguistic tools. However, words are also...

.... The chapter concluded that domain-general learning mechanisms provide valuable insights into the central issues of language acquisition and explanations for recurrent patterns in language change, which in turn explain why languages are the way they are, including not only language universals but also...

...Given the diversity of languages, it is unlikely that the human capacity for language resides in rich universal syntactic machinery. More likely, it resides centrally in the capacity for vocal learning combined with a distinctive ethology for communicative interaction, which together (no doubt...

..., the status of global structural levels, contour, and the question of psychological musical universals are discussed. The strongest correspondences between music and language appear to be between musical syntax and linguistic phonology, not musical syntax and linguistic syntax. Published in the Strungmann...