Approaches
One original researcher in the field is Luc Steels, head of the research units of Sony CSL in Paris and the AI Lab at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. He and his team are currently investigating ways in which artificial agents self-organize languages with natural-like properties and how meaning can co-evolve with language. Their research is based on the hypothesis that language is a complex adaptive system that emerges through adaptive interactions between agents and continues to evolve in order to remain adapted to the needs and capabilities of the agents. This research has been implemented in fluid construction grammar (FCG), a formalism for construction grammars that has been specially designed for the origins and evolution of language. The approach of computational modeling and the use of robotic agents grounded in real life is claimed to be theory independent. It enables the researcher to find out exactly what cognitive capacities are needed for certain language phenomena to emerge. It also focuses the researcher in formulating hypotheses in a precise and exact manner, whereas theoretical models often stay very vague.
Some linguists, such as John McWhorter, have analyzed the evolution and construction of basic communication methods such as Pidginization and Creolization.
"Nativist" models of "Universal Grammar" are informed by linguistic universals such as the existence of pronouns and demonstratives, and the similarities in each languages process of nominalization (the process of verbs becoming nouns) as well as the reverse, the process of turning nouns into verbs. This is a purely descriptive approach to what we mean by "natural language" without attempting to address its emergence.
Finally there are those archaeologists and evolutionary anthropologists – among them Ian Watts, Camilla Power and Chris Knight (co-founder with James Hurford of the EVOLANG series of conferences) — who argue that 'the origin of language' is probably an insoluble problem. In agreement with Amotz Zahavi, Knight argues that language — being a realm of patent fictions — is a theoretical impossibility in a Darwinian world, where signals must be intrinsically reliable. If we are to explain language's evolution, according to this view, we must tackle it as part of a wider one — the evolutionary emergence of symbolic culture as such.
Read more about this topic: Evolutionary Linguistics
Famous quotes containing the word approaches:
“As the truest society approaches always nearer to solitude, so the most excellent speech finally falls into Silence. Silence is audible to all men, at all times, and in all places. She is when we hear inwardly, sound when we hear outwardly. Creation has not displaced her, but is her visible framework and foil. All sounds are her servants, and purveyors, proclaiming not only that their mistress is, but is a rare mistress, and earnestly to be sought after.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Someone approaches to say his life is ruined
and to fall down at your feet
and pound his head upon the sidewalk.”
—David Ignatow (b. 1914)
“You should approach Joyce’s Ulysses as the illiterate Baptist preacher approaches the Old Testament: with faith.”
—William Faulkner (1897–1962)