9b. Pullum, G.K. & Scholz BC (2002) Empirical assessment of stimulus poverty arguments

 9b. Pullum, G.K. & Scholz BC (2002) Empirical assessment of stimulus poverty arguments

Reading: Pullum, G.K. & Scholz BC (2002) Empirical assessment of stimulus poverty arguments. Linguistic Review 19: 9-50

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9a. Pinker, S. Language Acquisition

 9a. Pinker, S. Language Acquisition

A close look at one of the most controversial issues at the heart of cognitive science: Chomsky's view that Universal Grammar has to be inborn because it cannot be learned from the data available to the language-learning child.

Reading: Pinker, S. Language Acquisition. in L. R. Gleitman, M. Liberman, and D. N. Osherson (Eds.), An Invitation to Cognitive Science, 2nd Ed. Volume 1: Language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

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8b. Blondin Massé et al (2012) Symbol Grounding and the Origin of Language: From Show to Tell

 8b. Blondin Massé et al (2012) Symbol Grounding and the Origin of Language: From Show to Tell

Blondin-Massé, Alexandre; Harnad, Stevan; Picard, Olivier; and St-Louis, Bernard (2013) Symbol Grounding and the Origin of Language: From Show to Tell. In, Lefebvre, Claire; Cohen, Henri; and Comrie, Bernard (eds.) New Perspectives on the Origins of Language. Benjamin

Arbib, M. A. (2018). In support of the role of pantomime in language evolution. Journal of Language Evolution, 3(1), 41-44.

Vincent-Lamarre, Philippe., Blondin Massé, Alexandre, Lopes, Marcus, Lord, Mèlanie, Marcotte, Odile, & Harnad, Stevan (2016). The Latent Structure of Dictionaries.  TopiCS in Cognitive Science  8(3) 625–659  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZvzvazY54Y

Organisms’ adaptive success depends on being able to do the right thing with the right kind of thing. This is categorization. Most species can learn categories by direct experience (induction). Only human beings can acquire categories by word of mouth (instruction). Artificial-life simulations show the evolutionary advantage of instruction over induction, human electrophysiology experiments show that the two ways of acquiring categories still share some common features, and graph-theoretic analyses show that dictionaries consist of a core of more concrete words that are learned earlier, from direct experience, and the meanings of the rest of the dictionary can be learned from definition alone, by combining the core words into subject/predicate propositions with truth values. Language began when purposive miming became conventionalized into arbitrary sequences of shared category names describing and defining new categories via propositions.

8a. Pinker, S. & Bloom, P. (1990). Natural language and natural selection

 8a. Pinker, S. & Bloom, P. (1990). Natural language and natural selection

What's wrong and right about Steve Pinker's views on language evolution? And what was so special about language that the capacity to acquire it became evolutionarily encoded in the brains of our ancestors – and of no other surviving species – about 300,000 years ago? (It gave our species a unique new way to acquire categories, through symbolic instruction rather than just direct sensorimotor induction.)

Reading: Pinker, S. & Bloom, P. (1990). Natural language and natural selection. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 13(4): 707-784.

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7b. Cauchoix, M. & Chaine, A. S. (2016). How can we study the evolution of animal minds?

 7b. Cauchoix, M. & Chaine, A. S. (2016). How can we study the evolution of animal minds?

Reading: Cauchoix, M., & Chaine, A. S. (2016). How can we study the evolution of animal minds? Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 358.

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7a. Lewis et al (2017) Evolutionary Psychology

 7a. Lewis et al (2017) Evolutionary Psychology

Why is it that some evolutionary explanations sound plausible and make sense, whereas others seem far-fetched or even absurd?

Reading: Lewis, D. M., Al-Shawaf, L., Conroy-Beam, D., Asao, K., & Buss, D. M. (2017). Evolutionary psychology: A how-to guide. American Psychologist, 72(4), 353-373

https://labs.la.utexas.edu/buss/files/2013/02/Lewis-Al-Shawaf-Conroy-Beam-Asao-and-Buss-2017.pdf

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6b. Harnad, S. (2003b) Categorical Perception

 6b. Harnad, S. (2003b) Categorical Perception

Reading: Harnad, S. (2003b) Categorical Perception. Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science. Nature Publishing Group. Macmillan.

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