Kyoto Conference on Evolinguistics
Abstracts
Nov. 11 (Sat)
13:30-14:00
Evolinguistics: What is it, who does it, and how will it evolve?
Koji Fujita (Kyoto U.)
In this introductory talk, I will first overview our research project Evolinguistics, describing its
aims and method and illustrating how we organize ourselves to attain our goal in an
unprecedented, truly integrative and interdisciplinary manner. In the remainder of the talk, I will
focus on the issue of hierarchy (or hierarchical compositional syntax) of human language, one of
the two main common grounds for our project. I will review and rethink my previous hypothesison the evolution of Merge, to bridge the gap between generative grammar and cognitive linguistics,
occasionally referring to other speakers’ lectures.
14:00-14:35
Principled explanations in comparative biomusicology
Rie Asano (Institute of Musicology, U. of Cologne)
Recent theoretical and empirical findings in comparative research on syntax of music andlanguage indicate that both cognitive systems share some neurocognitive computations, but differ
in their representations. However, it is still unclear how domain-general computations operate
upon domain-specific representations. The goal of the current talk is to specify this computational
problem from a theoretical, neuroscientific, as well as evolutionary perspective, and to clarify
similarities and differences between music and language by providing principled explanations interms of 1) syntax as a set of combinatorial principles and 2) neural structures and mechanisms as
implementational principles. Original contributions of the current talk to music-language
comparative research are twofold. First, through an extensive review of theoretical considerations
as well as behavioral, neuroscientific, and neuropsychological studies, I show that the very
similarity of music and language syntax lies in the process of temporal integration, i.e. theprojection of domain-specific hierarchical structures onto temporal linearly ordered structures.
Second, I discuss how the neurocognitive systems music and language are implemented on thebasis of domain-general neural structures and mechanisms by focusing especially on thecortico-basal ganglia-thalamocortical circuits in morphosyntactic and phrasal syntactic processing
in language as well as beat-based rhythmic sequence processing in music. Based on those results, I
propose an action-oriented comparative framework and suggest for future research that the way
how domain-general neurocognitive computations for temporal integration operate on
domain-specific representations should be investigated in terms of domain-general motor
planning flexibly adapting to domain-specific goals. The results of the talk provide important
implications for Comparative Biomusicology, investigating the biological foundations of music incomparison with other cognitive systems in light of mechanisms, ontogeny, phylogeny, andadaptive function.
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14:50-15:25
Brain mechanisms for MERGE
Michiru Makuuchi (National Rehabilitation Center for Persons with Disabilities)
Humans operate language as an information processing system on the basis ofcomputational competence of the brain. The ‘brain and language’ relation is evident from clinicalexamination of patients who have organic insults to the brain. In the end of the 19th century, twoareas are identified as language centres in the brain: Broca’s area in the left inferior frontal gyrus
and Wernicke’s area in the left posterior superior temporal gyrus. Broca’s area has a major role inspeech production, but also makes a significant contribution to comprehension of complex
sentences. Advent of modern neuroimaging techniques such as PET and fMRI in the 1990s has
allowed us to observe brain activation of living men noninvasively with a resolution of several mm
during the processing of language. As expected, researchers have found activation in Broca’s areafor hierarchical structure building of sentences. Some researchers, however, localised the effect in
the anterior temporal lobe, claiming Broca’s area participates to the sentence processing as a mere
phonological working memory buffer during the processing. Zaccarella and coworkers recently
review neuroimaging studies that compared sentences vs. word lists, and settled the disagreement:
mixture of content and function words in lists caused unforeseeable activation in Broca’s area
while content-only and function-only lists did not. Furthermore, they demonstrated essential
involvement of Broca’s area in the fundamental operation of linguistic structure building, namely
MERGE, by their own fMRI study. Thus, the current evidence suggests that Broca’s area MERGEs
words to build hierarchical structures.
15:25-16:00
Evolution of physical weakness by social selection through choice of collaborative partners
Yasuo Ihara (U. of Tokyo)
The interdependence hypothesis proposed by Tomasello and others is an evolutionary
account for human cooperation and communication. They argue that human collaborative
foraging first occurred in Stag-Hunt-type situations. In Stag Hunt, two players decide whether
they hunt for Hare or Stag. Hare is less valuable and can be caught by oneself, while Stag is morevaluable and requires collaboration. Stag is also a risky option because if you go for Stag and yourpartner does not, you get nothing. It is claimed that since early hominins lived in a relatively harshenvironment, where "Hare" was insufficient for survival, strong selection favoring collaboration
was at work. A possible obstacle to this hypothesis is dominance asymmetry. Considering
dominance asymmetry, it is rational (or adaptive) for the dominant individual to monopolize theresource obtained collaboratively, in which case it becomes rational for the subordinate not tocollaborate. How could this situation be saved? I hypothesize that preference for less dominantpartners played a key role and this resulted in social selection for physical weakness. I explore thispossibility using computer simulations, taking the reduction of canine teeth in humans as apossible example.

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16:15-17:05
Brain growth trajectory and language-readiness: Linking hypotheses and new data
Cedric Boeckx (ICREA/U. of Barcelona)
In this first talk I revisit the claim I first formulated at Evolang9, Kyoto according to which
the events underlying the globularization of the human brain/skull can shed light on how ourbrain became language-ready. I show how earlier explorations of this hypothesis may not havebeen the optimal way of articulating my central claim, and how recent data, from paleogenomics
to cognitive neuroscience offer better ways to test, and eventually strengthen the originalhypothesis.

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Nov. 12 (Sun)09:30-10:05
A biolinguistic approach to multicompetence
Shiro Ojima (Yokohama National U.)
Competence, the target of inquiry in Chomskyan theoretical linguistics, is the linguisticknowledge represented in the mind of an idealized native speaker. The implicit assumption here isthat this idealized native speaker is monolingual. In the current world, however, there are morebilinguals and multilinguals than pure monolinguals, and multilingualism is becoming the default
rather than the exception. Humans’ language-learning capacity is potentially multilingual, asevidenced by the fact that healthy human children can become bilingual almost effortlessly given
enough input in two languages. To fully understand humans’ linguistic ability, the scope of ourinquiry should be expanded to include multicompetence, that is, the knowledge of two or morelanguages represented in one mind. This also applies to rapidly increasing biolinguistic studies
addressing language evolution or the evolutionary origin of humans’ biological capacity to acquire
language. My talk will outline a new research program which combines multicompetence andbiolinguistics to address the evolution of multicompetence. In particular, I will ask whether theabilities needed to become multilingual are specific to human language or not. My tentative
conclusion based on animal research and neuroscience is that none of those abilities is specific tohuman language. This in turn leads us to the view that the critical event that made humans
linguistic (such as the appearance of Merge) during human evolution made them multilingual
simultaneously, with the other abilities having been in place beforehand.
10:05-10:40
A cognitive linguistics view of language acquisition and its implications for language evolution
Kazumi Taniguchi (Kyoto U.)
This presentation aims to offer fundamental theoretical views of cognitive linguistics and toillustrate how it approaches the issue of language acquisition and evolution. Special attention willbe paid to the “usage-based model” which presumes that grammar emerges from language use asa result of extracting common patterns among linguistic usages (i.e. constructional schemas). It isshown that the development of cognitive abilities concerning abstraction and recognition ofcommonalities is key to children’s acquisition of word meanings as well as grammaticalconstructions. It will also be noted that the usage-based acquisition of a language is supported bycommunicative factors characteristically observable in child-adult interactions. The usage-based
account of acquisition suggests the natural paths of development of language and the significant
effect of individuals’ acquisition process on historical language evolution.
10:55-11:30
Ostensive-inferential communication and language development
Harumi Kobayashi (Tokyo Denki U.)
Inferential mechanism is important in human communication. People do not code everything
they want to say on language. They rather choose to rely on others’ inferential ability to discern the4

intended meaning that is not always shown explicit by utterances. In the ostensive-inferentialcommunication, the speaker conveys information showing one’s communicative intention explicit,
suggesting “I convey some variable information to YOU right now.” Ostensive-inferential
communication is proposed to be human-specific. It makes interpretation of provided information
possible and promotes sharing intentionality. Children develop the ability for ostensive
communication at an early age. In this talk, I trace the development of ostensive communicationand examine how it may contribute to language development. In particular, I focus on
disambiguation mechanism of pointing gesture.
13:10-13:45
Constructive approaches to evolution of social learning and niche construction
Reiji Suzuki (Nagoya U.)
We discuss two studies on constructive approaches to evolution of social learning and niche
construction focusing on emergence of novel traits, which may be relevant to understanding thecoevolution of language and language-related abilities. First, we introduce a simple agent-based
evolutionary model of social learning and individual learning of multiple phenotypes in a rugged
fitness landscape. We show that interactions between different roles of these learning processes
allowed the population to acquire complex and adaptive trait sets by crossing valleys in the fitness
landscape. Second, we introduce an evolutionary model of defensive strategies of artificial preycreatures in which they need to avoid predation by constructing physical structures composed ofmultiple objects in a 2D physically simulated environment. We show that there was a large
diversity in emerging adaptive structures, and ecological inheritance of these structures from aparent creature affected the proportion of types of evolved adaptive structures.
13:45-14:20
Adaptability of recursive combination: Evolutionary simulation and some speculations
Takashi Hashimoto (JAIST)
By adopting the hypothesis that the precursor of recursive combination of lexical items is therecursive combination of objects, we studied the evolution of recursive combination forunderstanding its adaptability using a computational model. We identified two adaptabilities ofrecursive combination: the diversification of production methods and the diversification ofproducts. It was also shown that the recursive object combination became effective in anenvironment where resource competition among individuals was severe and the variety ofpossible products was sufficiently large. Since recursive combination involves the combination ofcomponents with each other, it encourages the reuse of components to produce various otherproducts. The diversification of production methods may further enhance the chances of creating anovel product via mutation of various production methods. Therefore, in a sense, we can consider
recursive combination to be included in the capability for innovation. On the other hand, products
or artistic works that generate novel structures, styles, modes, etc. make us feel more innovative
than producing various instances by reusing components. A possible process for such innovative
works is the abstraction of a structure from existing instances, its manipulation to create a newstructure, and the application of the new structure to realize a new instance. We can find such a5

process in innovative technologies and creative arts, such as jet engine and whole tone scale. As
exemplified by the structural priming in the use of language, we often recognize structures fromexperience and utilize the structures for producing various instances in varied domains ofknowledge, which is not limited to just language. However, the manipulation of structures does
not seem to be omnipresent; therefore, innovation/creation is not usual. In this talk, as for a future
form of communication, we hope to discuss how recursive combination is related to the
manipulation of structures.
15:05-15:55
Self-domestication and its contribution to modern human cognition
Cedric Boeckx (ICREA/U. of Barcelona)
In this talk I examine the claim that self-domestication was an important factor in theevolution of our species and its special cognitive mode. After briefly summarizing some of mygroup's recent results on this issue, I turn my attention to some unresolved issues pertaining to thenature of (self-)domestication, and focus on ways to experimentally test some of the predictions
that our work has generated.
15:55-16:30
Behavioral and neural mechanisms for stimulus chunking in birds and humans
Kazuo Okanoya (U. of Tokyo)
Bengalese finches are a domesticated strain of wild white-rumped munias, which areendemic to South-East Asia. White-rumped munias were imported some 250 years ago to Japanand ever since domesticated as Bengalese finches. During the process, brownish plumage changed
to whiteish in Bengalese finches and their parental behavior strengthened. In addition, songs
became phonologically and sequentially complex. Notably, compared to linear, fixed sequence ofmunia songs, Bengalese finch songs are sequentially complex, comprising with several syllable
chunks sung in a finite-state syntax. We consider these changes in part occurred by domesticationthat reduces stress level and favors for relaxed selection and sexual selection. We then examinedsequential capacity in Bengalese finches. We showed that they learn songs from multiple tutorsand splice and chunk multiple song elements to create novel songs. This should require an ability
for statistical segmentation and we are able to show neural substrate that enables this cognitivemanipulation. We also examined human on-line statistical segmentation in humans and showedbasic brain architecture for statistical segmentation may be the same in birds and humans, and thisis enhanced in both species by the process of domestication.

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