@Tessa
Verhoef,
Simon
Kirby,
Carol
Padden

Cultural
emergence
of
combinatorial
structure
in
an
artificial
whistled
language






@article{christiansen-kirby-03_language-evolution-controversies,
  title={Language evolution: Consensus and controversies},
  author={Morten H. Christiansen and Simon Kirby},
  journal={Trends in Cognitive Sciences},
  volume={7},
  number={7},
  pages={300--307},
  year={2003},
  publisher={Elsevier},
  abstract = {

Why is language the way it is? How did language come to be this way? And why
is our species alone in having complex language? These are old unsolved
questions that have seen a renaissance in the dramatic recent growth in
research being published on the origins and evolution of human language. This
review provides a broad overview of some of the important current work in
this area. We highlight new methodologies (such as computational modeling),
emerging points of consensus (such as the importance of pre-adaptation), and
the major remaining controversies (such as gestural origins of language). We
also discuss why language evolution is such a difficult problem, and suggest
probable directions research may take in the near future.

}}