Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Cornish H
PROVIDER: S-EPMC5261806 | biostudies-literature | 2017
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Cornish Hannah H Dale Rick R Kirby Simon S Christiansen Morten H MH
PloS one 20170124 1
Human language is composed of sequences of reusable elements. The origins of the sequential structure of language is a hotly debated topic in evolutionary linguistics. In this paper, we show that sets of sequences with language-like statistical properties can emerge from a process of cultural evolution under pressure from chunk-based memory constraints. We employ a novel experimental task that is non-linguistic and non-communicative in nature, in which participants are trained on and later asked ...[more]