Article

Evolutionary Dynamics Do Not Motivate a Single-Mutant Theory of Human Language

2019-01-10

Abstract excerpt

One of the most controversial hypotheses in cognitive science is the Chomskyan evolutionary conjecture that language arose instantaneously in our species as the result of a single staggeringly fortuitous mutation. Here we analyze the evolutionary dynamics implied by this hypothesis, which has never been formalized. The theory supposes the emergence and fixation of a single mutant (capable of the syntactic operatio...

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Literature Corpus work: 071179a5-3e65-58d5-98fc-dcd1b3960d99
DOI: 10.1101/517029

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