title:	Coevolution of Languages and the Language Faculty
author(s):	Ted Briscoe
affiliation:	Computer Laboratory -- University of Cambridge
time and place:	Monday, 14.00 - 16.45, room A In the thematic session on Semantics and Cognition
abstract:	Human language acquisition, and in particular the acquisition of grammar, is a partially-canalized, strongly-biased but robust and efficient procedure. A variety of explanations have been offered for the emergence of a partially-innate language acquisition device (LAD), such as exaption of a spandrel (Gould, 1987), biological saltation (Bickerton, 1990) or genetic assimilation (Pinker and Bloom, 1990). But none provide a coherent account of both the emergence and maintenance of a LAD in an evolving population of language users exposed to a variety of linguistic systems during the period of adaptation for the LAD. I will argue that a coevolutionary approach is the only coherent account, and that computational simulation suggests that genetic assimilation of grammatical information will occur despite epistasis and pleitropy and even in circumstances of rapid concurrent linguistic evolution (pace Deacon, 1997).