Evolutionary Linguistics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_linguistics

Evolutionary linguistics is the scientific study of the origins and development of language. The main challenge in this research is the lack of empirical data: spoken language leaves no traces. This led to an abandonment of the field for more than a century^[1]. Since the late 1980s, the field has been revived in the wake of progress made in the related fields of psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, evolutionary anthropology and cognitive science.

EVOLANG Conference

The Evolution of Language International Conferences[1] have been held biennially since 1996.

1. 1996 Edinburgh: Hurford, J. R., Studdert-Kennedy, M. & Knight C. (eds), Approaches to the Evolution of Language - Social and Cognitive Bases, Cambridge University Press, 1998.

2. 1998 London: Chris Knight, James R. Hurford and Michael Studdert-Kennedy (eds), The Evolutionary Emergence of Language: Social function and the origins of linguistic form, Cambridge University Press,

3. 2000 Paris: J. L. Desalles & L. Ghadakpour (eds.), Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on the Evolution of Language

4. 2002 Harvard: J. Hurford & T. Fitch (eds.), Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on the Evolution of Language

5. 2004 Leipzig

6. 2006 Rome: Kenny. Smith, Andrew, D. M. Smith, Angelo Cangelosi, The Evolution of Language: Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on the Evolution of Language, World Scientific, ISBN 9812566562.

7. 2008 Barcelona [2]

Books:

Cangelosi, A. and Harnad, S. (2001) The adaptive advantage of symbolic theft over sensorimotor toil: Grounding language in perceptual categories Evolution of Communication 4(1):pp. 117-142.

M. Christiansen and S. Kirby (eds.), Language Evolution, Oxford University Press, New York (2003), ISBN 978-0199244843.

Bickerton, D., Symbol and Structure: A Comprehensive Framework for Language Evolution, pp. 77-93.

Hurford, J. R., The Language Mosaic and Its Evolution, pp. 38-57.

Lieberman, P.,Motor Control, Speech, and the Evolution of Language, pp. 252-271.

Deacon, T. (1997) The symbolic species: the coevolution of language and the brain, Norton, New York.

Hauser, M.D. (1996) The evolution of communication, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

Daniel Dor and Jablonka Eva (2001). How language changed the genes. In Tabant J. Ward. S. (editors). Mouton de Gruyer: Berlin, pp 149-175.

Dor D. and Jablonka E. (2001) From cultural selection to genetic selection: a framework for the evolution of language. Selection, 1-3, pp. 33-57.

Hauser MD, Chomsky N, Fitch WT (2002). "The faculty of language: what is it, who has it, and how did it evolve?". Science 298 (5598): 1569–79. doi:10.1126/science.298.5598.1569. PMID 12446899.

Jackendoff, R. (2002) Foundations of language: brain, meaning, grammar, evolution Oxford University Press, New York

Komarova, N.L. (2007). Language and Mathematics: An evolutionary model of grammatical communication. In: History & Mathematics. Ed. by Leonid Grinin, Victor C. de Munck, and Andrey Korotayev. Moscow, KomKniga/URSS. P. 164-179. ISBN 9785484010011.

Nowak, M.A. and N.L. Komarova (2001) Towards an evolutionary theory of language, Trends in Cognitive Sciences 5 (7), pp. 288–295.

Pinker, S. (1994) The language instinct, HarperCollins, New York.

Pinker, S. and P. Bloom (1990) Natural language and natural selection Behavioral and Brain Sciences 13: pp. 707–784

Sampson, Geoffrey: Evolutionary Language Understanding, published 1996 by Cassel (London), ISBN 0304336505

Steels, L. (2001) Grounding Symbols through Evolutionary Language Games. In: Cangelosi A. and Parisi D. (Eds.) Simulating the Evolution of Language Springer.

Steklis, H.D. and Harnad, S (1976) From hand to mouth: Some critical stages in the evolution of language In: Harnad, S., Steklis, H. D. and Lancaster, J., (1976) (Eds) Origins and Evolution of Language and Speech. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 280: 1-914.

See also the UIUC Language Evolution and Computation Bibliography/Repository (1200+ related references, citations, and fulltext pointers)

Encyclopedia Americana,Americana Corporation of Canada{1959}-Iceland-Language

Zuidema, W. H., The Major Transitions in the Evolution of Language, PhD thesis, Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, University of Edinburgh (2005) [3]

Johansson, Sverker, Origins of language : constraints on hypotheses, Converging evidence in language and communication research vol. 5, Amsterdam : Benjamins (2005).

Mithen, Steven J., The singing neanderthals : the origins of music, language, mind and body London : Weidenfeld & Nicolson (2005), ISBN 978-0-297-64317-3

Partha Niyogi, The computational nature of language learning and evolution MIT Press, Current studies in linguistics 43 (2006).

A. Carstairs-McCarthy, The evolution of language, Lingua vol. 117, issue 3 (2007, March).

Bernd Heine, Tania Kuteva, The genesis of grammar : a reconstruction, Oxford University Press, 2007, ISBN 978-0-19-922776-1, ISBN 978-0-19-922777-8.

James R. Hurford, Language in the light of evolution, Oxford University Press, Studies in the evolution of language vol. 1 (2007).

Atkinson QD, Meade A, Venditti C, Greenhill SJ, Pagel M (2008). "Languages evolve in punctuational bursts". Science 319 (5863): 588. doi:10.1126/science.1149683. PMID 18239118.

External links

Fluid Construction Grammar

Language Evolution and Computation Research Unit, University of Edinburgh

Sony CSL Research

Vrije Universiteit Brussel Research

ARTI Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Vrije Universiteit Brussel

ECAgents: The Project on Embodied and Communicating Agents