Self-Organization in the Evolution of Speech

by Pierre-Yves Oudeyer

Overview

Speech is the principal supporting medium of language. In this book Pierre-Yves Oudeyer considers how spoken language first emerged. He presents an original and integrated view of the interactions between self-organization and natural selection, reformulates questions about the origins of speech, and puts forward what at first sight appears to be a startling proposal - that speech can be spontaneously generated by the coupling of evolutionarily simple neural structures connecting perception and production. He explores this hypothesis by constructing a computational system to model the effects of linking auditory and vocal motor neural nets. He shows that a population of agents which used holistic and unarticulated vocalizations at the outset are inexorably led to a state in which their vocalizations have become discrete, combinatorial, and categorized in the same way by all group members. Furthermore, the simple syntactic rules that have emerged to regulate the combinations of sounds exhibit the fundamental properties of modern human speech systems. This original and fascinating account will interest all those interested in the evolution of speech.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780191516108
Publisher:	OUP Oxford
Publication date:	04/06/2006
Series:	Studies in the Evolution of Language , #6
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Pierre-Oudeyer is a researcher at Sony Computer Science Laboratory, Paris. He studies the origins and evolution of language, and is a specialist of computer modelling, including robotic systems, artificial intelligence, and developmental systems. His work on the origins of speech was awarded the French Prix Le Monde de la recherche universitaire, 2004 and the Prix ASTI in 2005. James R. Hurford is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Edinburgh. His books include Semantics (with B. Heasley, 1983), Grammar (1994), and as co-editor Approaches to the Evolution of Language (1998), all published by CUP.

Table of Contents

	Preface	X
	List of Figures	xii
1	The Self-Organization Revolution in Science	1
1.1	Self-organization: a new light on nature	1
1.2	Language origins	6
1.2.1	Interdisciplinarity	7
1.2.2	Computer modelling	9
2	The Human Speech Code	14
2.1	The instruments of speech	14
2.2	Articulatory phonology	16
2.3	The organization of the speech code: universals	21
2.3.1	The speech code is discrete and combinatorial	22
2.3.2	The speech code is a classification system shared by the whole linguistic community	24
2.3.3	Statistical regularities in the phoneme inventories of human languages	25
2.4	The diversity of speech codes	28
2.5	Origins, development, and form	29
3	Self-Organization and Evolution	32
3.1	Self-organization	32
3.1.1	Rayleigh-Benard convection	32
3.1.2	Ferro-magnetization	35
3.2	Self-organization and natural selection	38
3.2.1	Classic neo-Darwinism	39
3.2.2	Self-organization: constraining the search space	40
3.2.3	Evolutionary explanations: function is not enough	42
3.2.4	Exaptation	48
3.3	Explaining the origin of living forms	51
4	Existing Theories	53
4.1	The reductionist approach	53
4.2	The functionalist approach	56
4.3	Operational scenarios	58
4.4	Going further	65
5	Artificial Systems as Research Tools	68
5.1	What is the scientific logic?	68
5.2	What is the point of constructing artificial systems?	70
6	The Artificial System	75
6.1	Mechanism	75
6.1.1	Assumption 1: neural units	76
6.1.2	Assumption 2: perceptuo-motor correspondences	77
6.1.3	Assumption 3: perception and plasticity	80
6.1.4	Assumption 4: production	83
6.1.5	Assumption 5: initial distribution of preferred vectors	84
6.1.6	Assumption 6: no coordinated interactions	86
6.1.7	What is not assumed	86
6.2	Dynamics	86
6.2.1	The case of uniform initial distribution	86
6.2.2	The case where the initial distribution is non-uniform	96
6.3	Categorization and acoustic illusions	97
7	Learning Perceptuo-motor Correspondences	106
7.1	The articulatory synthesizer and a model of vowel perception	111
7.2	Dynamics: predicting human vowel systems	113
8	Strong Combinatoriality and Phonotactics	123
8.1	Temporal neurons and their self-organized death	124
8.2	The dynamic formation of phonotactics and patterns of combinations	126
8.3	The impact of articulatory and energetic constraints	133
9	New Scenarios	139
9.1	Compatibility with neuroscience	140
9.2	Contribution to scenarios of the origins of speech	143
9.2.1	An adaptationist scenario: an origin linked to the evolutionary advantage of linguistic communication systems	143
9.2.2	Another adaptationist scenario, with the exaptation of discreteness, shared categorization, and combinatoriality	146
9.2.3	An exaptationist scenario in which the origin of the whole speech system results from architectural side effects	147
10	Constructing for Understanding	150
	Bibliography	155
	Index	163