Language as a Complex Adaptive System

Language as a Complex Adaptive System

Author: Nick C. Ellis

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2009-12-30

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 144433400X

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Explores a new approach to studying language as a complex adaptive system, illustrating its commonalities across many areas of language research Brings together a team of leading researchers in linguistics, psychology, and complex systems to discuss the groundbreaking significance of this perspective for their work Illustrates its application across a variety of subfields, including languages usage, language evolution, language structure, and first and second language acquisition "What a breath of fresh air! As interesting a collection of papers as you are likely to find on the evolution, learning, and use of language from the point of view of both cognitive underpinnings and communicative functions." Michael Tomasello, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology


The Interactional Instinct

The Interactional Instinct

Author: Namhee Lee

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2009-05-21

Total Pages: 245

ISBN-13: 0199724962

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The Interactional Instinct explores the evolution of language from the theoretical view that language could have emerged without a biologically instantiated Universal Grammar. In the first part of the book, the authors speculate that a hominid group with a lexicon of about 600 words could combine these items to make larger meanings. Combinations that are successfully produced, comprehended, and learned become part of the language. Any combination that is incompatible with human mental capacities is abandoned. The authors argue for the emergence of language structure through interaction constrained by human psychology and physiology. In the second part of the book, the authors argue that language acquisition is based on an "interactional instinct" that emotionally entrains the infant on caregivers. This relationship provides children with a motivational and attentional mechanism that ensures their acquisition of language. In adult second language acquisition, the interactional instinct is no longer operating, but in some individuals with sufficient aptitude and motivation, successful second-language acquisition can be achieved. The Interactional Instinct presents a theory of language based on linguistic, evolutionary, and biological evidence indicating that language is a culturally inherited artifact that requires no a priori hard wiring of linguistic knowledge.


Parallel Problem Solving from Nature-PPSN VI

Parallel Problem Solving from Nature-PPSN VI

Author: Marc Schoenauer

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2000-09-06

Total Pages: 920

ISBN-13: 3540410562

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This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Parallel Problem Solving from Nature, PPSN VI, held in Paris, France in September 2000. The 87 revised full papers presented together with two invited papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 168 submissions. The presentations are organized in topical sections on analysis and theory of evolutionary algorithms, genetic programming, scheduling, representations and operators, co-evolution, constraint handling techniques, noisy and non-stationary environments, combinatorial optimization, applications, machine learning and classifier systems, new algorithms and metaphors, and multiobjective optimization.


Comparative Approaches to Cognitive Science

Comparative Approaches to Cognitive Science

Author: H. L. Roitblat

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 552

ISBN-13: 9780262181662

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Presents an animal-based, largely non-symbolic approach to understanding the basic mechanisms involved in adaptive intelligence. Contributions discuss and explain concepts and techniques, providing a balance of both theoretical and empirical approaches.


Social Sustainability, Past and Future

Social Sustainability, Past and Future

Author: Sander van der Leeuw

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2020-02-13

Total Pages: 533

ISBN-13: 1108498698

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A novel, integrated approach to understanding long-term human history, viewing it as the long-term evolution of human information-processing. This title is also available as Open Access.


Signals and Boundaries

Signals and Boundaries

Author: John H. Holland

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2012-07-13

Total Pages: 317

ISBN-13: 0262017830

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An overarching framework for comparing and steering complex adaptive systems is developed through understanding the mechanisms that generate their intricate signal/boundary hierarchies.


The Evolution of Adaptive Systems

The Evolution of Adaptive Systems

Author: James Patrick Brock

Publisher: Elsevier

Published: 2000-07-12

Total Pages: 657

ISBN-13: 0080542468

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The data of evolutionary biology have changed in a very radical way in recent years, the most significant input to this revolution being the advances made in developmental genetics. Another recent development is a noticeable shift away from extreme specialization in evolutionary biology. In this, we are perhaps to be reminded of George Gaylord Simpson's comments: "evolution is an incredibly complex but at the same time integrated and unitary process." The main objective of this book is to illustrate how natural adaptive systems evolve as a unity--with the particular objective of identifying and merging several special theories of evolution within the framework of a single general theory. The Evolution of Adaptive Systems provides an interdisciplinary overview of the general theory of evolution from the standpoint of the dynamic behavior of natural adaptive systems. The approach leads to a radically new fusion of the diverse disciplines of evolutionary biology, serving to resolve the considerable degree of conflict existing between different schools of contemporary thought. - The book is a timely volume written by a natural historian with a broad view of biology - The author draws examples from a large range of organisms from many different habitats and niches where interesting adaptations have evolved - Probes deeply into mechanisms of evolution such as developmental genetics, morphogenesis, chromosome structure, and cladogenesis - Clear definition of terms, with illustrations visualizing the main theoretical structures, and point-by-point summaries clearly stating the principal conclusions


Complex Adaptive Systems

Complex Adaptive Systems

Author: John H. Miller

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2009-11-28

Total Pages: 285

ISBN-13: 1400835526

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This book provides the first clear, comprehensive, and accessible account of complex adaptive social systems, by two of the field's leading authorities. Such systems--whether political parties, stock markets, or ant colonies--present some of the most intriguing theoretical and practical challenges confronting the social sciences. Engagingly written, and balancing technical detail with intuitive explanations, Complex Adaptive Systems focuses on the key tools and ideas that have emerged in the field since the mid-1990s, as well as the techniques needed to investigate such systems. It provides a detailed introduction to concepts such as emergence, self-organized criticality, automata, networks, diversity, adaptation, and feedback. It also demonstrates how complex adaptive systems can be explored using methods ranging from mathematics to computational models of adaptive agents. John Miller and Scott Page show how to combine ideas from economics, political science, biology, physics, and computer science to illuminate topics in organization, adaptation, decentralization, and robustness. They also demonstrate how the usual extremes used in modeling can be fruitfully transcended.


Adaptation in Natural and Artificial Systems

Adaptation in Natural and Artificial Systems

Author: John H. Holland

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 1992-04-29

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 9780262581110

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Genetic algorithms are playing an increasingly important role in studies of complex adaptive systems, ranging from adaptive agents in economic theory to the use of machine learning techniques in the design of complex devices such as aircraft turbines and integrated circuits. Adaptation in Natural and Artificial Systems is the book that initiated this field of study, presenting the theoretical foundations and exploring applications. In its most familiar form, adaptation is a biological process, whereby organisms evolve by rearranging genetic material to survive in environments confronting them. In this now classic work, Holland presents a mathematical model that allows for the nonlinearity of such complex interactions. He demonstrates the model's universality by applying it to economics, physiological psychology, game theory, and artificial intelligence and then outlines the way in which this approach modifies the traditional views of mathematical genetics. Initially applying his concepts to simply defined artificial systems with limited numbers of parameters, Holland goes on to explore their use in the study of a wide range of complex, naturally occuring processes, concentrating on systems having multiple factors that interact in nonlinear ways. Along the way he accounts for major effects of coadaptation and coevolution: the emergence of building blocks, or schemata, that are recombined and passed on to succeeding generations to provide, innovations and improvements.


The Evolution Of Human Languages

The Evolution Of Human Languages

Author: John A. Hawkins

Publisher: Westview Press

Published: 1992-10-20

Total Pages: 392

ISBN-13:

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This proceedings volume from a workshop by the same name sponsored by the Santa Fe Institute in August, 1989, covers a range of disciplines and subdisciplines of relevance to linguistics, phonetics, psycholinguistics, cognitive science, sociolinguistics, archaeological and anthropological linguistics, neuroanatomy, biology, and physics.