语言多样性的生物学根源
The Biological Origin of Linguistic Diversity
摘要：
与动物的交流系统不同，人类语言的各个方面几乎都具有多样性。语言以不同的方式使用音调，点击，或手动符号来表示含义的差异;有些语言缺乏名动词的区别（例如，Straits Salish），而其他语言则具有细粒度句法类别的扩散（例如，Tzeltal）;有些语言没有形态学（例如，普通话），而其他人则将整个句子打包成一个单词（例如，卡尤加）。进化生物学面临的一个挑战是如何调和语言的多样性和使用者的高度生物一致性。在这里，我们对语言变化和地理分散的过程进行了建模，并发现了灵活学习的一致压力，无论使用何种语言。这种压力的出现是因为灵活的学习者能够最好地应对人类移民后与不同文化演变相关的语言变化率。因此，基因和快速变化的语言结构的共同进化为语言多样性提供了生物学基础，而不是遗传适应语言的特定方面，如递归。只有灵活学习的生物适应与文化进化相结合，才能解释每个孩子如何有潜力学习任何人类语言。
英文摘要：
In contrast with animal communication systems, diversity is characteristic of almost every aspect of human language. Languages variously employ tones, clicks, or manual signs to signal differences in meaning; some languages lack the noun-verb distinction (e.g., Straits Salish), whereas others have a proliferation of fine-grained syntactic categories (e.g., Tzeltal); and some languages do without morphology (e.g., Mandarin), while others pack a whole sentence into a single word (e.g., Cayuga). A challenge for evolutionary biology is to reconcile the diversity of languages with the high degree of biological uniformity of their speakers. Here, we model processes of language change and geographical dispersion and find a consistent pressure for flexible learning, irrespective of the language being spoken. This pressure arises because flexible learners can best cope with the observed high rates of linguistic change associated with divergent cultural evolution following human migration. Thus, rather than genetic adaptations for specific aspects of language, such as recursion, the coevolution of genes and fast-changing linguistic structure provides the biological basis for linguistic diversity. Only biological adaptations for flexible learning combined with cultural evolution can explain how each child has the potential to learn any human language.
机构、总结、中文摘要均由AI分析而来，可能存在错误，请以论文正文为准。
