Oxford Handbook of Approaches to Language Evolution

This handbook provides a detailed account of the many methodological considerations and approaches in the field of language evolution. Each chapter highlights a particular methodology and outlines a question or set of questions that can be addressed using that methodology, illustrated by a key example from the recent literature.

List of contents

• Introduction


• Part I. Human data


• 1: Monica Tamariz and Aliki Papa: Iterated learning experiments


• 2: Shira Tal, Inbal Arnon, and Jennifer Culbertson: Artificial language learning


• 3: Thomas Franz Müller and Limor Raviv: Communication experiments: Social interaction in the formation of novel communication systems


• 4: Jonas Nölle and David Peeters: Virtual reality as a tool to study language evolution


• 5: Vera Kempe and Marisa Casillas: Studying child-directed speech


• 6: Stefan Hartmann and Michael Pleyer: Corpus-based approaches to evolutionary dynamics in language


• 7: Caleb Everett: Adaptation


• 8: Wendy Sandler, Svetlana Dachkovsky, and Rose Stamp: The evolution of the grammar of the body in sign languages


• 9: Danielle Naegeli and Marieke Schouwstra: Silent gesture: Gesture studies with hearing participants


• 10: Anita Slonimska and Asli Özyürek: Methods to study evolution of iconicity in sign languages


• 11: Damian Blasi, Felicia Bisnath, and Pui Yiu Szeto: The study of Creole languages


• 12: Juan Moriano, Cedrix Boeckx, and Martin Kuhlwilm: Paleogenomics: A window into the genetic basis of derived traits in Homo sapiens


• 13: Yakov Pichkar and Nicole Creanza: Joint analysis of human linguistic and genomic variation


• 14: Maxime Derex and Charlotte Brand: Studying long-term evolutionary processes over short time scales: Methods in cumulative cultural evolution


• 15: Isobel Wisher and Kristian Tylén: An integrative approach to early symbolic evolution: Experimenting with the past


• Part II. Simulations


• 16: Vanessa Ferdinand: The Bayesian iterated learning model


• 17: Xenia Ohmer and Christine Cuskley: Communication games: Modelling language evolution through dyadic agent interactions


• 18: Katie Mudd and Bart de Boer: Computational methods for language variation and convergence


• 19: Mathieu Rita, Paul Michel, Rahma Chaabouni, Olivier Pietquin, Emmanuel Dupoux, and Florian Strub: Language evolution with deep learning


• 20: Nicolas Cambier and Roman Miletitch: Task-driven language evolution with swarm robotics


• 21: Chundra Cathcart and Balthasar Bickel: Linguistic evolution in time and space: Addressing the methodological challenges


• 22: Francis Mollica and Noga Zaslavsky: Information-theoretic and machine-learning methods for semantic categorization


• 23: Kateryna Krykoniuk and Seán G. Roberts: Causal graphs as a tool for exploring language evolution


• Part III. Animal data


• 24: Marco Gamba and Chiara De Gregorio: Observational work


• 25: Erica A. Cartmill, Emilie Genty, Kirsty E. Graham, Charlotte Grund, and Catherine Hobaiter: Re-imagining great ape gesture (coding)


• 26: Simone Pika and Ray Wilkinson: Evolutionary roots of human cooperative communication: Using the CA-assisted comparative approach for quantitative and qualitative analyses


• 27: Marlen Fröhlich and Carel P. van Schaik: From species- to individual-level comparisons: What variation in great ape communication can tell us about language evolution


• 28: Mélissa Berthet, Maël Leroux, Simon W. Townsend, and Stuart K. Watson: ethods of examining the processing and production of rule-based sequences in animals


• 29: Daria Valente and Andrea Ravignani: Bioacoustics and rhythm


• 30: Ronald J. Planer, Elisa Bandini, and Claudio Tennie: Hominin tool evolution and its (surprising) relation to language origins


• 31: Nicole Eichert and Rogier B. Mars: Comparative neuroimaging to study the neural infrastructure for language


• 32: Toshitaka N. Suzuki: How to study animal syntax

About the author

Limor Raviv leads the Language Evolution and Adaptation in Diverse Situations (LEADS) group at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, and is also a part-time lecturer in social interaction at the University of Glasgow. Her work simulates language evolution and diversification de novo and in silico by using a range of experimental and computational tools. She aims to uncover the major social, cognitive, and environmental pressures that shape human languages past and present, and to link core aspects of learning, cultural evolution, and ecology to explain the emergence and cross-linguistic variation of languages.

Cedric Boeckx is a research professor at ICREA, and the principal investigator of the Cognitive Biology of Language research group at the University of Barcelona, as well as a member of the University of Barcelona Institutes of Neuroscience and of Complex Systems. His current research focuses on the neurobiological foundations of the human language faculty, with special emphasis on evolutionary issues. His work is intended to facilitate integration among disciplines with the aim of achieving both better experimental testing of theoretical hypotheses and more solid interpretations of experimental findings.

Summary

This handbook provides a detailed account of the many methodological considerations and approaches in the field of language evolution. Each chapter highlights a particular methodology and outlines a question or set of questions that can be addressed using that methodology, illustrated by a key example from the recent literature.

Product details

• Authors: Limor (Group Leader Raviv
• Assisted by: Cedric Boeckx (Editor), Boeckx Cedric (Editor), Limor Raviv (Editor)
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Release: 26.08.2025
• EAN: 9780192886491
• ISBN: 978-0-19-288649-1
• No. of pages: 656
• Series: Oxford Handbooks
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative linguistics; Evolution, SCIENCE / Life Sciences / Evolution, Language acquisition, Computational Linguistics, Computational and corpus linguistics