Research seminar: Anna Jon-And, Stockholm University

Title: The role of sequence representation in the evolution of language.

Seminar

Date:

Thursday 6 February 2025

Time:

15.00 – 16.30

Location:

C307, Södra huset

 

Abstract

Human language is uniquely complex and diverse in relation to other species’ communication. Understanding the evolution of human language requires considering why it evolved, why it has not evolved in other species, and what actually evolved. 

In this talk I will explore the hypothesis that human linguistic as well as other cultural capacities are rooted in faithful representation of stimulus sequences. This hypothesis is grounded in empirical observations of differences between humans and other animals in recognizing and remembering sequential information. 

To investigate why only humans have language, I will present evolutionary analyses of the utility of sequence representation showing that it is exceedingly costly and that current memory systems found in animals are often more efficient. 

For sequence representation to evolve, an abundance of useful sequential information and extensive learning opportunities are required, two conditions that were likely fulfilled early in human evolution. 

To explore whether sequence representation is sufficient for language to evolve culturally, I will present a minimal learning model with sequence representation as its most central component. I will show that the model is able to extract useful structure from toy languages of different levels of complexity, and abstract productive grammatical categories from short sentences.

Anna Jon-And is senior lecturer and Director of Centre for Cultural Evolution, Stockholm University.

On Anna Jon-And