Wang William S-Y, Minett James W
Department of Electronic Engineering, Room 404, Ho Sin Hang Engineering Building, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, NT, Hong Kong.
Trends Ecol Evol. 2005 May;20(5):263-9. doi: 10.1016/j.tree.2005.03.001.
Research into the emergence and evolution of human language has received unprecedented attention during the past 15 years. Efforts to better understand the processes of language emergence and evolution have proceeded in two main directions: from the top-down (linguists) and from the bottom-up (cognitive scientists). Language can be viewed as an invading process that has had profound impact on the human phenotype at all levels, from the structure of the brain to modes of cultural interaction. In our view, the most effective way to form a connection between the two efforts (essential if theories for language evolution are to reflect the constraints imposed on language by the brain) lies in computational modelling, an approach that enables numerous hypotheses to be explored and tested against objective criteria and which suggest productive paths for empirical researchers to then follow. Here, with the aim of promoting the cross-fertilization of ideas across disciplines, we review some of the recent research that has made use of computational methods in three principal areas of research into language evolution: language emergence, language change, and language death.
在过去15年里，对人类语言的出现和演变的研究受到了前所未有的关注。为更好地理解语言出现和演变过程所做的努力主要朝着两个方向进行：自上而下（语言学家）和自下而上（认知科学家）。语言可以被视为一个具有侵入性的过程，它在各个层面上都对人类表型产生了深远影响，从大脑结构到文化互动模式。我们认为，将这两种努力联系起来的最有效方法（如果语言进化理论要反映大脑对语言施加的限制，这一点至关重要）在于计算建模，这种方法能够探索众多假设并根据客观标准进行测试，还能为实证研究人员指明后续可行的路径。在此，为促进跨学科思想的交叉融合，我们回顾了最近在语言进化研究的三个主要领域中利用计算方法的一些研究：语言的出现、语言的变化和语言的消亡。
