For each session a text will be proposed, to be read beforehand. The session will consist in seminar-style discussion of this piece, led by the instructor and
in which ample participation of the students is expected (see the section on evaluation.)
If the situation demands it, these discussions could be moved to an online videoconference platform.
Insofar as the topic allows it (most clearly in our sessions on primate and early human communication) we will consider the extent to which gender roles influenced the evolution of language.
Tentative Schedule
This is a tentative list of readings, and of the lectures that will discuss them.
There will likely be changes in both, but this should give you a good idea of what to expect from the course.
• Week 1: Course overview.
2.1 Weeks 2, 3 and 4: communication and cooperation
• We first introduce the sender-receiver framework
– Ideas in game and information theory to model cooperation and some
of its constraints.
– Skyrms, Signals, chaps. 2 and 3
• We will then discuss the problem of cooperation in the face of deception and free-riding
– Skyrms, The Stag Hunt, chapters 1, 2 and 3.
• Finally, we wil look into how animal communication, and animal cognition in general, presents features we associate with language proper.
– Fitch, The evolution of language, chapter 4
2.2 Weeks 5, 6 and 7: Primate and Early Human Communication
• Cheney and Seyfarth, Baboon Metaphysics
• Tomasello, Origins of Human Communication
• Planer and Sterelny, From signal to symbol
• We are going to explore two different, to an extent antagonistic, ideas:
1. Tomasello and Planer & Sterelny: Language depends on a mutualistic and altruistic substrate, that exists only in humans and (to a much lesser extent) great apes – this presumably is facilitated by the presence of common interest.
2. Cheney and Seyfarth: at least some of the cognitive capabilities that will eventually be deployed in language use depend on imperfect common interest – the Machiavellian need to navigate dangerous and complicated social structures.
2.3 Weeks 8, 9 and 10: Computational Models
• We revisit formal models of the evolution of language, with our newlygained understanding.
• Kirby et al., Compression and communication in the cultural evolution of linguistic structure
• Readings from Cangelosi et al., Simulating the evolution of language
• Week 11: Conclusions