Dediu Dan
School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, The University of Edinburgh, 14 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh EH89LN, UK.
J Theor Biol. 2008 Sep 21;254(2):400-7. doi: 10.1016/j.jtbi.2008.05.028. Epub 2008 May 29.
It has recently been proposed [Dediu, D., Ladd, D.R., 2007. Linguistic tone is related to the population frequency of the adaptive haplogroups of two brain size genes, ASPM and Microcephalin. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 104(26), 10944-10949] that genetically coded linguistic biases can influence the trajectory of language change. However, the nature of such biases and the conditions under which they can become manifest have remained vague. The present paper explores computationally two plausible types of linguistic acquisition biases in a population of agents implementing realistic genetic, linguistic and demographic processes. One type of bias represents an innate asymmetric initial state (initial expectation bias) while the other an innate asymmetric facility of acquisition (rate of learning bias). It was found that only the second type of bias produces detectable effects on language through cultural transmission across generations and that such effects are produced even by weak biases present at low frequencies in the population. This suggests that learning preference asymmetries, very small at the individual level and not very frequent at the population level, can bias the trajectory of language change through the process of cultural transmission.
最近有人提出[德迪乌，D.，拉德，D.R.，2007年。语言声调与两个脑容量基因ASPM和小头畸形基因的适应性单倍群的群体频率有关。《美国国家科学院院刊》104(26)，10944 - 10949]，基因编码的语言偏向会影响语言变化的轨迹。然而，这种偏向的本质以及它们能够显现的条件仍然不明确。本文通过计算探索了在一群实施现实的遗传、语言和人口统计学过程的主体中两种看似合理的语言习得偏向类型。一种偏向类型代表一种天生的不对称初始状态（初始期望偏向），而另一种代表一种天生的不对称习得能力（学习速率偏向）。研究发现，只有第二种偏向类型通过代际文化传播对语言产生可检测的影响，并且即使是群体中低频出现的微弱偏向也会产生这种影响。这表明，在个体层面非常小且在群体层面不太常见的学习偏好不对称，能够通过文化传播过程使语言变化的轨迹产生偏向。
