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9780262513395

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A thoughtful and original analysis of important problems in the history, evolution, and acquisition of language. --Steven Pinker, Johnstone Professor of Psychology, Harvard University, and author of The Language Instinct, Words and Rules, How the Mind Works, and The Blank Slate Partha Niyogi introduces new perspectives on the link between language acquisition and language change across generations. He theorizes with a mathematician's rigor, generalizes across biological, political, and cultural distinctions, and offers intriguing simulations. --David W. Lightfoot, Professor of Linguistics, Georgetown University, and Assistant Director, National Science Foundation A study of the relationship between language learning by individuals and the evolution of language gives rise to a host of issues, all of them controversial. Niyogi has first provided a lucid discussion of many of these issues and then suggested a very interesting formal and computational model, based primarily on a distribution over the grammars of a population of learners. Linguists and computational linguists of different persuasions will find this book very rewarding. --Aravind K. Joshi, Henry Salvatori Professor of Computer and Cognitive Science, University of Pennsylvania Biological evolution can only be understood by thinking in terms of populations. This book helps us to think in terms of linguistic populations. The vast array of examples and models offers a wealth of tools for understanding the dynamics of the subtle interplay between language evolution and language learning. --Karl Sigmund, Faculty for Mathematics, University of Vienna

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Partha Niyogi was a Professor of Computer Science and Statistics at the University of Chicago.

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