Function, Selection, and Innateness The Emergence of Language Universals [Hardcover]

This book is a powerful demonstration of the value of looking at language as an adaptive system, which reaches the heart of debates in linguistics and cognitive science on the evolution and nature of language. Simon Kirby combines functional and formal theories in order to develop a way of treating language as an adaptive system in which its communicative and formal roles have crucial and complimentary roles.

1. A Puzzle of Fit
2. The Impact of Processing on Word Order
3. Hierarchies and Competing Motivations
4. The Limits of Functional Adaptation
5. Innateness and Function in Linguistics
6. Conclusion

In this important and highly original work Simon Kirby proposes a new method for addressing a major issue in the explanation of language universals. If many universals are to be explained by processing efficiency, then how do the preferences of performance actually become the fixed, and variant, conventions of grammars that we observe in current language samples? Kirby's computer simulations model the 'adaptive mechanism', and his discussion of the relationship between function, selection and innateness is both clarifying and timely. --John A. Hawkins, Department of Linguistics, University of Southern California

A brilliant, innovative computer-simulated exploration into the problem of linkage--a missing link in the current functional attempts at explaining language universals: how functional pressures grammaticalise and become innate properties governing human language and its acquisition. In these ... richly illustrated ... pages Simon Kirby succeeds admirably in integrating usage-based functional approaches and formal, innatist theories. This intelligent, thought-provoking book is an essential reading for all those concerned with grammatical theory--functional or formal, language universals, linguistic typology and historical change. --Masayoshi Shibatani, Kobe University