Linking Language evolution, language acquisition, and language diversity: How social and cognitive pressures shape learning and communication

Limor Raviv (Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics)

ABSTRACT:
What are the social, environmental, and cognitive pressures that shape the evolution of language in our species? Why are there so many different languages in the world? And how did this astonishing linguistic diversity come about?
These are some of the most interesting questions in the fields of cognitive science and linguistics, and represent the range of topics discussed in my research so far.
My work focuses on linking core aspects of language acquisition, language evolution, and language diversity using a range of novel behavioral paradigms and computational models.
My goal is to shed light on the communicative pressures and cognitive constraints (e.g., memory limitations, efficiency) that shape social interaction and language use in our species, and to identify the social, environmental, and cross-cultural factors (e.g., population size) that lead to language diversity and to cross-linguistic variation.
In this talk, I will provide an overview of my research in the past six years (including methods and results from selected projects), as well as present future directions and ongoing work.