Language and Cognition Seminar - Dr Olga Feher

How are communication systems shaped by interaction and transmission?

Communication systems have been created and are constantly shaped by their users. This is not only true to human language, which is uniquely complex and expressive among the communication systems of the animal world, but also to other socially learned systems, such as birdsong. The processes of individual learning, social interaction and cross-generational cultural transmission mediate the relationship between the cognitive makeup of users and the structural features of communication systems. I study these processes in a comparative framework using atypical languages and songs, and observing how learners respond as they acquire abnormal input and use it to communicate. While learning, interaction and transmission all amplify learners’ biases and drive the emergence of species-typical features, each seem to favour different aspects of the system, sometimes exerting opposing forces on the way these features evolve.