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Evolution of Colour Terms: 7 Perceptual Warping
The last few posts have showed that several domains of constraint influence colour categorisation. There is evidence that these categorisations can influence perception, which has been identified as a...
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Evolution of Colour Terms: 9 Niche Construction
In a series of posts, I’ve been discussing constraints on the evolution of colour terms. For the full dissertation and references, go here. This section reiterates how a link between linguistic...
View ArticleEvolution of Colour Terms: 10 Universal Patterns are not Evidence for Innate...
In a series of posts, I’ve been discussing constraints on the evolution of colour terms. Here, I discuss the role of drift and also argue that universal patterns are not necessarily good evidence for...
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Never Too Old to Learn: FoxP2 Gene Has Important Post-developmental On-line...
Experimental studies (e.g. Jones & Munhall 2000) indicate that humans monitor their own speech through hearing in order to maintain accurate vocal articulation throughout the lifespan. Similarly,...
View ArticleIs seeing believing?
I just finished watching the latest episode of Horizon, Is seeing believing? It had lots of cool material on recent research into our perceptual systems and how some unique individuals (see bat man and...
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On Phylogenic Analogues
A recent post by Miko on Kirschner and Gerhart’s work on developmental constraints and the implications for evolutionary biology caught my eye due to the possible analogues which could be drawn with...
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Phonology and Phonetics 101
What I’m going to try and do in this series of posts is follow my phonology module at Cardiff. As such, these posts are essentially my notes on the topic, and may not always come across too clearly....
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Evolving Linguistic Replicators: Major Transitions and Grammaticalisation
Just before Christmas I found myself in the pub speaking to Sean about his work on bilingualism, major transitions and the contrast between language change and the cultural evolution of language. Now,...
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Are mirror neurons the basis of speech perception?
The discovery of Mirror Neurons in Macaque monkeys has lead to theories of the neurophysiological substrate of speech perception being grounded in mirror neurons. This is also relevant to the evolution...
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Never mind language, emotions are in a category of their own
A new paper in the journal ‘Emotion’ has presented research which has implications for the evolution of language, emotion and for theories of linguistic relativity. The paper, entitled ‘Categorical...
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