Access
To read this story in full you will need to login or make a payment (see right).
News and Views
Nature 404, 441-442 (30 March 2000) | doi:10.1038/35006523
nature jobs
Post-doctoral Research in Super-Resolution imaging of Mitotic Processes.
- Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute
- Toronto, ON Canada
Faculty / Managerial Level Position: Library Construction
- Baylor College of Medicine Human Genome Sequencing Center
- Houston, Texas
Survival of the clearest
Steven Pinker
Abstract
There are no fossils to show how language evolved. But evolutionary game theory is revealing how some of the defining features of human language could have been shaped by natural selection.
The study of the evolution of language, famously banned by the Société de Linguistique de Paris in 1866 and dismissed as idle story-telling ever since, has returned to respectability. Recent years have seen a flurry of articles and books1, 2, 3, 4, 5, a biannual research conference and now several papers by Martin Nowak and collaborators applying evolutionary game theory to the problem6, 7, 8, 9.
To read this story in full you will need to login or make a payment (see right).
