One of the major benefits of interdisciplinary research is the chance to swap tools between fields, to save having to reinvent the wheel. The fields of language evolution and evolutionary biology have been swapping tools for centuries to the enrichment of both. Here I will discuss three categories of tool swapping: conceptual tools, where analogies are drawn between hypotheses, patterns or processes, so that one field can take advantage of the path cut through the intellectual jungle by the other; theoretical (...) tools, where the machinery developed to process the data in one field is adapted to be applied to the data of the other; and analytical tools, where common problems encountered in both fields can be solved using useful tricks developed by one or the other. I will argue that conceptual tools borrowed from linguistics contributed to the Darwinian revolution in biology; that theoretical tools of evolutionary change can in some cases be applied to both genetic and linguistic data without having to assume the underlying evolutionary processes are exactly the same; and that there are practical problems that have long been recognised in historical linguistics that may be solved by borrowing some useful analytical tools from evolutionary biology. (shrink)

Approaching language change within a Darwinian framework constitutes a long-standing tradition within the literature of diachronic linguistics. However, many publications remain vague, omitting conceptual details or missing necessary terminology. For example, phylogenetic trees of language families are regularly compared to biological speciation, but definitions on mechanisms of inheritance, i.e. how linguistic information is transferred between individuals and cohorts, or on the linguistic correlates to genotype and phenotype are often missing or lacking. In light of this, Haider’s attempts to develop this (...) approach into a theoretically more precise position, closely mirroring principles of Darwinian natural selection in the dimension of diachronic grammatical change, but contrasting this with non-Darwinian lexical change. He draws a comparison to viral replication, essentially positing that grammar variants act as mental viruses, competing for replication in new hosts, i.e. children during critical periods of language acquisition. Haider proposes that in light of this competition for replication, the unconscious fixation of an individual’s grammar leads to diachronic grammatical change largely mirroring Darwinian natural selection. Despite the intuitive appeal this mode of reasoning may feature, the following response paper identifies and discusses a suit of shortcomings to this conceptualization. Some problems arise from underspecified theoretical notions, others due to the incomplete or inaccurate adoption of biological principles, and yet more through a partial incompatibility with empirical data. These criticisms do not amount to a dismissal of the Darwinian framework Haider is following, but to a rejection of Haider’s current position. Albeit it remains unclear if a truly Darwinian approach to language change can be reached, suggestions on how Haider’s theoretical notions could be further developed are made and pertinent efforts may ultimately lead to a productive theory. (shrink)

We introduce ‘model migration’ as a species of cross-disciplinary knowledge transfer whereby the representational function of a model is radically changed to allow application to a new disciplinary context. Controversies and confusions that often derive from this phenomenon will be illustrated in the context of econophysics and phylogeographic linguistics. Migration can be usefully contrasted with concept of ‘imperialism’, that has been influentially discussed in the context of geographical economics. In particular, imperialism, unlike migration, relies upon extension of the original model (...) via an expansion of the domain of phenomena it is taken to adequately described. The success of imperialism thus requires expansion of the justificatory sanctioning of the original idealising assumptions to a new disciplinary context. Contrastingly, successful migration involves the radical representational re-interpretation of the original model, rather than its extension. Migration thus requires ‘re-sanctioning’ of new ‘counterpart idealisations’ to allow application to an entirely different class of phenomena. Whereas legitimate scientific imperialism should be based on the pursuit of some form of ontological unification, no such requirement is need to legitimate the practice of model migration. The distinction between migration and imperialism will thus be shown to have significant normative as well as descriptive value. (shrink)

Evidence of cultural influences on cognition is accumulating, but untangling these cultural influences from one another or from non-cultural influences has remained a challenging task. As between-group differences are neither a sufficient nor a necessary indicator of cultural impact, cross-cultural comparisons in isolation are unable to furnish any cogent conclusions. This shortfall can be compensated by taking a diachronic perspective that focuses on the role of culture for the emergence and evolution of our cognitive abilities. Three strategies for reconstructing early (...) human cognition are presented: the chaîne opératoire approach and its extension to brain-imaging studies, large-scale extrapolations, and phylogenetic comparative methods. While these strategies are reliant on our understanding of present-day cognition, they conversely also have the potential to advance this understanding in fundamental ways. (shrink)

Since the emergence of our species at least, natural selection based on genetic variation has been replaced by culture as the major driving force in human evolution. It has made us what we are today, by ratcheting up cultural innovations, promoting new cognitive skills, rewiring brain networks, and even shifting gene distributions. Adopting an evolutionary perspective can therefore be highly informative for cognitive science in several ways: It encourages us to ask grand questions about the origins and ramifications of our (...) cognitive abilities; it equips us with the means to investigate, explain, and understand key dimensions of cognition; and it allows us to recognize the continued and ubiquitous workings of culture and evolution in everyday instances of cognitive behavior. Taking advantage of this reorientation presupposes a shift in focus, though, from human cognition as a general, homogenous phenomenon to the appreciation of cultural diversity in cognition as an invaluable source of data. (shrink)

We begin our commentary by summarizing the commonalities and differences in cognitive phenomena across cultures, as found by the seven papers of this topic. We then assess the commonalities and differences in how our various authors have approached the study of cognitive diversity, and speculate on the need for, and potential of, cross-disciplinary collaboration.

Beller, Bender, & Jordan [Intro]. Which factors have triggered, constrained, or shaped the course of cognitive evolution is a question of key interest to cognitive science. The topic introduced here highlights the relevance of culture as a driving force in this process. It provides an overview of current empirical and theoretical work leading this field, and it investigates the potential for integrating multiple perspectives across several timescales and levels of analysis.

Speech sounds are an essential vehicle of information exchange and meaning expression in approximately 7,000 spoken languages in the world. What functional constraints and evolutionary mechanisms lie behind linguistic diversity of sound systems is under ongoing debate; in particular, it remains conflicting whether there exists any universal relationship between these constraints despite of diverse sounds systems cross-linguistically. Here, we conducted cross-linguistic typological and phylogenetic analyses to address the characteristics of constraints on linguistic diversity of vowel systems. First, the typological analysis (...) revealed a power-law based dependence between the global structural dispersion and the local focalization of vowel systems and validated that such dependence was independent of geographic region, language family, and linguistic affiliation. Second, the phylogenetic analysis further illustrated that the observed dependence resulted from correlated evolutions of these two structural properties, which proceeded in an adaptive process. These results provide empirical evidence that self-organization mechanisms helped shape vowel systems and common functional constraints took effect on the evolution of vowel systems in the world’s languages. (shrink)

One of the most basic functions of human language is to convey who did what to whom. In the world's languages, the order of these three constituents (subject [S], verb [V], and object [O]) is uneven, with SOV and SVO being most common. Recent experiments using experimentally elicited pantomime provide a possible explanation of the prevalence of SOV, but extant explanations for the prevalence of SVO could benefit from further empirical support. Here, we test whether SVO might emerge because (a) (...) SOV is not well suited for describing reversible events (a woman pushing a boy) and (b) pressures to be efficient and mention subjects before objects conspire to rule out many other alternatives. We tested this by asking participants to describe reversible and non‐reversible events in pantomime, and we instructed some participants to be consistent in the form of their gestures and to teach them to the experimenter. These manipulations led to the emergence of SVO in speakers of both English (SVO) and Turkish (SOV). (shrink)