Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7czq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T08:03:18.435Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

4 - Transmission, Self-Organization, and the Emergence of Language: A Dynamic Systems Point of View

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

By
Paul van Geert
Edited by
Ute Schönpflug
Ute Schönpflug
Affiliation:
Freie Universität Berlin
Get access

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Language is a human capacity that is typically transmitted from one generation to another (one speaks about one's mother tongue, for instance). However, what does transmission mean in this regard? The concept of transmission is well defined in fields like physics or the mathematical theory of information, where it relates to deep principles of the organization of matter, such as entropy. To what extent do we understand transmission if language is concerned? How does it relate to claims about language as an innate capacity? How does intergenerational transmission relate to the emergence or evolution of language over many generations? This chapter discusses these questions from the point of view of dynamic systems theory, which provides a general approach to understanding processes of change and emergence.

A TALE OF HEAT AND ORDER…

Since the early 1990s, developmental psychologists have been exploring a new approach to describing, explaining, and understanding developmental pro-cesses – namely, dynamic systems theory (Thelen & Smith, 1994, 1998; van Geert, 1994, 2003). Dynamic systems theory offers a natural and intuitive approach to such processes. It emphasizes the actual development as it takes place in real time. It explicitly accounts for each step in the process as the direct outcome of the preceding step. It focuses on mutual interactions between variables – that is, forces or components that affect one another. A major feature of dynamic systems thinking is its emphasis on the ubiquitousness of self-organization (Lewis & Granic, 1999).

Type
Chapter
Information
Cultural Transmission
Psychological, Developmental, Social, and Methodological Aspects
 , pp. 48 - 69
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aleksander, I. (2002). Understanding information, bit by bit: Shannon's equations. In Farmelo, G. (Ed.), It must be beautiful: Great equations of modern science (pp. 213–230). London and New York: Granta Books.Google Scholar
Ashby, W. R. (1947). Principles of the self-organizing dynamic system. Journal of General Psychology, 37, 125–128.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Brighton, H. (2002). Compositional syntax from cultural transmission. Artificial Life, 8, 25–54.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Chomsky, N. (1959). Review of Verbal Behavior by B. F. Skinner. Language, 35, 26–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chomsky, N. (1972). Language and mind. New York: Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich.Google Scholar
Christiansen, M. H., & Dale, R. (2003). Language evolution and change. In Arbib, M. A. (Ed.), Handbook of brain theory and neural networks (2nd ed.) (pp. 604–606). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Christiansen, M. H., & Kirby, S. (2003). Language evolution: Consensus and controversies. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7, 300–307.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Darwin, C. (1836). On the origin of species by means of natural selection. New York: Modern Library.Google Scholar
Graaf, J. W. (1999). Relating new to old: A classical controversy in developmental psychology. Groningen: Doctoral Dissertation.Google Scholar
Deacon, T. (1997). The symbolic species: The co-evolution of language and the human brain. London: Allen Lane/The Penguin Press.Google Scholar
Downing, K. L. (2004). Development and the Baldwin effect. Artificial Life, 10, 39–63.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Elbers, L. (1995). Production as a source of input for analysis: Evidence from the developmental course of a word-blend. Journal of Child Language, 22, 47–71.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Elbers, L. (1997). Output as input: A constructivist hypothesis in language acquisition. Archives de Psychologie, 65, 131–140.Google Scholar
Fodor, J. A. (1975). Language of thought. New York: Crowell.Google Scholar
Gould, S. J. (1996). Full house: The spread of excellence from Plato to Darwin. New York: Three Rivers Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Greene, B. (2005). The fabric of the cosmos. New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Hirsh-Pasek, K., Golinkoff, R. M., & Hollich, G. (1999). Trends and transitions in language development: Looking for the missing piece. Developmental Neuropsychology, 16, 139–162.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hirsh-Pasek, K., Tucker, M., & Golinkoff, R. M. (1996). Dynamic systems theory: Reinterpreting “prosodic bootstrapping” and its role in language acquisition. In Morgan, J. L. & Demuth, K. (Eds.), Signal to syntax: Bootstrapping from speech to grammar in early acquisition (pp. 449–466). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Hollich, G. J., Hirsh-Pasek, K., & Golinkoff, R. M. (2000). Breaking the language barrier: An emergentist coalition model for the origins of word learning. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 65, v–123.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kello, C. T. (2004). Characterizing the evolutionary dynamics of language. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8, 392–394.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kirby, S. (2002). Natural language from artificial life. Artificial Life, 8, 185–215.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kirby, S., Smith, K., & Brighton, H. (2004). From UG to universals: Linguistic adaptation through iterated learning. Studies in Language, 28, 587–607.Google Scholar
Lewis, M. D., & Granic, I. (1999). Who put the self in self-organization? A clarification of terms and concepts for developmental psychopathology. Development and Psychopathology, 11, 365–374.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
MacWhinney, B. (1998). Models of the emergence of language. Annual Review of Psychology, 49, 199–227.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Marantz-Henig, R. (2000). The monk in the garden. Lost and found: Genius of Gregor Mendel. New York: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Mendel, G. (1993). Experiments on plant hybrids (1865). New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Mitchener, W. G., & Nowak, M. A. (2004). Chaos and language. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London: Biological Sciences, 251(1540), 701–704.Google Scholar
Munroe, S., & Cangelosi, A. (2002). Learning and the evolution of language: The role of cultural variation and learning costs in the Baldwin effect. Artificial Life, 8, 311–339.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Niyogi, P., & Berwick, R. C. (2001). A dynamical systems model for language change. Complex Systems, 11(3), 161–204.Google Scholar
Nowak, M. A., & Komarova, N. L. (2001).Towards an evolutionary theory of language. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 5(7), 288–295.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nowak, M. A., Komarova, N. L., & Niyogi, P. (2001). Evolution of Universal Grammar. Science, 291, 114–118.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nowak, M. A., Komarova, N. L., & Niyogi, P. (2002). Computational and evolutionary aspects of language. Nature, 417, 611–617.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Piaget, J. (1975). L'Equilibration des structures cognitives: Problème central du développement. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.Google Scholar
Piatelli-Palmarini, M. (1980). Language and learning. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Pierce, J. R. (1961). Symbols, signals and noise. New York: Harper.Google Scholar
Pinker, S., & Bloom, P. (1990). Natural language and natural selection. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 13, 707–784.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prigogine, I., & Stengers, I. (1984). Order out of chaos. Boulder, CO: New Science Press.Google Scholar
Seidenberg, M. S., & MacDonald, M. C. (1999). A probabilistic constraints approach to language acquisition and processing. Cognitive Science, 23, 569–588.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shannon, C. E. (1948). A mathematical theory of communication. The Bell System Technical Journal, 27, 379–423 and 623–656, July and October 1948. Retrieved from http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/ms/what/shannonday/shannon1948.pdf.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Skinner, B. F. (1957). Verbal behavior. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, K., Kirby, S., & Brighton, H. (2003). Iterated learning: A framework for the emergence of language. Artificial Life, 9, 371–386.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Thelen, E., & Smith, L. B. (1994). A dynamic systems approach to the development of cognition and action. Cambridge, MA: Bradford Books/MIT Press.Google Scholar
Thelen, E., & Smith, L. B. (1998). Dynamic systems theories. In Damon, W. & Lerner, R. (Eds.), Handbook of Child Psychology (pp. 563–634). New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Tomasello, M. (2003). Constructing a language: A usage-based theory of language acquisition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Veer, R., & Valsiner, J. (1991). Understanding Vygotsky: A quest for synthesis. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Geert, P. (1989). Psychological development: Organized self-organization. In Dalenoort, G. (Ed.), The paradigm of self-organization (pp. 146–166). New York: Gordon and Breach.Google Scholar
Geert, P. (1994). Vygotskian dynamics of development. Human Development, 37, 346–365.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Geert, P. (1998). A dynamic systems model of basic developmental mechanisms: Piaget, Vygotsky and beyond. Psychological Review, 105, 634–677.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Geert, P. (2003). Dynamic systems approaches and modeling of developmental processes. In Valsiner, J. & Conolly, K. J. (Eds.), Handbook of developmental psychology(pp. 640–672). London: Sage.Google Scholar
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher mental processes. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Vygotsky, L. S. (1987). Thinking and speech. In Rieber, R. W. & Carton, A. S. (Eds.), The collected works of L. S. Vygotsky: Vol. I. Problems of general psychology (pp. 37–285). New York: Plenum.Google Scholar
Weisstein, E. W. (1999). CRC concise encyclopedia of mathematics. Boca Raton, FL: Chapman & Hall/CRC.Google Scholar
Yang, C. D. (2004). Universal Grammar, statistics or both? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8, 451–456.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×