This book addresses tendencies of human vowel systems from the point of view of self-organization. It uses computer models to show that tendencies of human languages can be reproduced by artificial agents. DeBoer then explores the implications of those results for the evolution of language.

Oudeyer combines insights from neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and linguistics to explore questions about the origins of speech. He puts forward the startling proposal that speech can be spontaneously generated by the coupling of evolutionarily simple neural structures connecting perception and production. He tests this hypothesis through a computational system and shows that the linking of auditory and vocal motor neural nets produces syntactic rules that exhibit the fundamental properties of modern human speech systems. This fascinating account will interest all those interested in the...

Examining the evolution of the grammatical structure of words in the contexts of human evolution and the origins of language, this text challenges the conventional views of the relationship between syntax and morphology, the adaptationist view of language evolution, and the notion that language reflects 'laws of form'.