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Cultural Evolution of Language 315 Cultural Evolution of Language K Smith, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK Cultural Transmission and ß 2006 Elsevier Ltd Cultural Evolution of Language 315 Cultural Evolution of Language K Smith, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK Cultural Transmission and ß 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Cultural Evolution Children learn language from examples of language Introduction use, often called the Primary Linguistic Data (PLD). The PLD must be the linguistic behavior of other Language is a culturally transmitted system – children language users, as children acquire the language of learn the language of their speech community on the their linguistic community. This linguistic behavior is basis of the linguistic behavior of that community. a consequence of the internalized linguistic knowl- This cultural transmission can lead to the cultural edge of these other individuals, and the PLD therefore evolution of the linguistic system, whereby language reflects the linguistic knowledge of the individuals in changes over time as a consequence of pressures act- a child’s speech community. These individuals have ing on it during its cultural transmission. grammars that define their knowledge of language Cultural evolution potentially offers an explana- and that knowledge of language guides their linguistic tion for the origins of a linguistic system with the behavior. The child is therefore attempting to acquire design features and functionality of human language, a system of linguistic knowledge, a grammar, based on as well as an explanation for the subsequent change data that are the consequence of the linguistic knowl- of such systems – the processes that explain the ways edge, or grammars, of other individuals. Andersen in which languages change on a historical timescale summarizes this relationship between linguistic data can also explain how languages themselves emerged. and mental grammar as follows: ‘‘the verbal output of Furthermore, the fact that languages themselves any speaker is determined by the grammar he has can evolve has implications for linguistic theories internalized . any speaker’s internalized grammar more generally. One goal for linguistic theory is to is determined by the verbal output from which it has achieve explanatory adequacy (Chomsky, 1965) – been inferred’’ (1973: 767). an explanation of how language is acquired on the Language therefore matches the sorts of general basis of linguistic data. This goal for linguistic theory definition of culturally transmitted systems given by explicitly links features of language with components anthropologists or evolutionary theorists concerned of an innate capacity for language. However, the with culture (e.g., Boyd and Richerson, 1985). Lan- evolutionary dynamics arising from cultural trans- guage, like other cultural systems, is transmitted from mission mean that we cannot infer the characteristics generation to generation via a process of learning of the language faculty directly from a single episode from the behavior of others. of language acquisition, but must consider how any What are the basic steps in this transmission innate language faculty will interact with cultural of language? Obviously, internalized knowledge of transmission to shape languages over cultural time. language (a mental grammar) is not directly physical- I begin by explaining exactly what is meant when ly transferred from individual to individual. Rather, we say that language is culturally transmitted and language is transmitted via a more indirect route – that this cultural transmission leads to cultural evolu- following Andersen (1973), Hurford (1990), and tion and then I discuss what kinds of linguistic phe- Kirby (2002), Hurford explains that ‘‘a language per- nomena can be explained in these terms. I then go on sists historically through successive instantiations in to consider three theories of the cultural evolution of two quite different media: (1) mental grammars of language, each of which proposes rather different individuals, and (2) public behavior in the form of mechanisms for cultural evolution. Note that this is utterances’’ (Hurford, 2002: 302). Hurford dubs this not an exhaustive list of all possible mechanisms – the ‘expression/induction’ cycle. Language is trans- rather, these three theories offer a contrasting range mitted via expression (application of internal knowl- of accounts for the evolution of linguistic structure. edge to produce observable behavior) and induction Finally, I consider the ways in which cultural evolu- (acquisition/learning of a mental grammar based on tion has significance for the wider linguistic commu- some observed set of behavior). nity. Although such evolutionary processes have The cultural transmission of language, based on its obvious implications for our understanding of lan- repeated transformation from grammar to data to guage origins and language change, their impact po- grammar and so on, leads to the possibility of cultural tentially runs deeper, to goals that lie at the heart of evolution. Cultural evolution, in the broadest poss- classic synchronic linguistics. ible terms, is change in a culturally transmitted system 316 Cultural Evolution of Language over time. The cultural evolution of language, then, is Cultural Evolution as a Consequence of Cultural change in a linguistic system over time as a conse- Transmission quence of its cultural transmission. The very fact of cultural transmission can drive the What determines the way in which a culturally cultural evolution of language. This theory as outlined transmitted system, such as language, will evolve? here is based on ideas presented and developed by I briefly outline below some mechanisms that drive Simon Kirby, Jim Hurford, Morten Christiansen, and cultural evolution. However, before doing so, it Terry Deacon (see, e.g., Christiansen and Devlin, 1997; is worth considering how far such an account can Christiansen and Ellefson, 2002; Deacon, 1997; take us. Hurford, 2002; Kirby, 2001, 2002). For convenience, One obvious goal would be to explain language I refer to these theories as transmission theories. change on a historical timescale – language change In order for a language to survive over repeated is manifestly a consequence of the cultural transmis- episodes of cultural transmission, it must be possible sion of language. One theory to be discussed below for language learners to learn that language from the (Croft, 2000) takes this as a primary goal. But how PLD, and so languages must be learnable. The key far back in time must we go before cultural transmis- insight of transmission theories is that this learnabil- sion and evolution stop being relevant? 100 years? ity constraint introduces an evolutionary pressure 1000 years? 100 000 years? As long as language that results in languages themselves changing over has been culturally transmitted, cultural processes time so as to become more learnable. Transmission and cultural evolution will have been at work. theories therefore emphasize the fact that language Consequently, theories of the cultural evolution of itself adapts to its medium of transmission. language are increasingly regarded as useful tools I summarize two ways in which the learnability for explaining the origins of aspects of linguistic of linguistic systems can vary: due to their gener- structure. alizability from a finite set of data (bottlenecked The appeal of taking the process of cultural evolu- transmission) and due to learnability considerations tion to its logical explanatory limits is that it poten- arising from the biases of language learners (biased tially offers a single, unified mechanism or set of transmission). mechanisms that can explain the origins of linguistic systems and also their subsequent change. In other Language Evolution as a Consequence of the Data words, cultural transmission potentially offers a Bottleneck If a linguistic system is to persist over uniform mechanism that explains both the genesis cultural time, it must pass through the cycle from data of language (a qualitative shift from a nonlinguistic to grammar to data multiple times. One consequence system to a linguistic system) and language change of this passage through the medium of linguistic data (subsequent quantitative shift), at whatever temporal is that language must be learnable from a finite set of granularity is required. Of course, this is not to deny data produced under real-world conditions. that biological evolution plays a role in explaining Languages are capable of expressing an infinite the origins of language – even if we subscribe to the range of concepts, and any member of this infinite strongest cultural account, we must still explain the array of expressions is interpretable in turn. Acquir- emergence of the capacity for a culturally transmitted ing a language therefore entails the acquisition of a system of communication. Indeed, there may have system for producing and understanding such an infi- been significant interactions between biological nite set of meaningful utterances. However, the sys- and cultural evolution during this process (see, e.g., tem for generating this infinite set of utterances must Deacon, 1997). be acquired from a finite set of data – it is necessarily true that language learners do not see all the sentences Mechanisms for Cultural Evolution of a language during the language learning process, because this would take an infinite amount of time. What causes a linguistic system to change over time? This data bottleneck is one aspect of the poverty of There are several possible mechanisms for the cultur- the stimulus problem, which is
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