Simon M. Kirby

Last updated

Simon M. Kirby is a British cognitive scientist, currently holding the Chair of Language Evolution at the University of Edinburgh, where he is Director of the Graduate School, and Programme Director for the MSc in the Evolution of Language and Cognition. He specializes in evolutionary computational models of human language and its development.

Contents

He is a creator, together with members of the experimental pop band FOUND, of Cybraphon, an "autonomous emotional robot band" in a wardrobe, [1] which won a BAFTA in 2009. [2]

Publications

Kirby has published over 52 articles, chapters, and other publications, including the books:

and the peer-reviewed journal articles:

See also

Related Research Articles

Computational linguistics is an interdisciplinary field concerned with the computational modelling of natural language, as well as the study of appropriate computational approaches to linguistic questions. In general, computational linguistics draws upon linguistics, computer science, artificial intelligence, mathematics, logic, philosophy, cognitive science, cognitive psychology, psycholinguistics, anthropology and neuroscience, among others.

Evolutionary linguistics or Darwinian linguistics is a sociobiological approach to the study of language. Evolutionary linguists consider linguistics as a subfield of sociobiology and evolutionary psychology. The approach is also closely linked with evolutionary anthropology, cognitive linguistics and biolinguistics. Studying languages as the products of nature, it is interested in the biological origin and development of language. Evolutionary linguistics is contrasted with humanistic approaches, especially structural linguistics.

Universal grammar (UG), in modern linguistics, is the theory of the innate biological component of the language faculty, usually credited to Noam Chomsky. The basic postulate of UG is that there are innate constraints on what the grammar of a possible human language could be. When linguistic stimuli are received in the course of language acquisition, children then adopt specific syntactic rules that conform to UG. The advocates of this theory emphasize and partially rely on the poverty of the stimulus (POS) argument and the existence of some universal properties of natural human languages. However, the latter has not been firmly established, as some linguists have argued languages are so diverse that such universality is rare, and the theory of universal grammar remains controversial among linguists.

Cognitive linguistics is an interdisciplinary branch of linguistics, combining knowledge and research from cognitive science, cognitive psychology, neuropsychology and linguistics. Models and theoretical accounts of cognitive linguistics are considered as psychologically real, and research in cognitive linguistics aims to help understand cognition in general and is seen as a road into the human mind.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Evolutionary computation</span> Trial and error problem solvers with a metaheuristic or stochastic optimization character

Evolutionary computation from computer science is a family of algorithms for global optimization inspired by biological evolution, and the subfield of artificial intelligence and soft computing studying these algorithms. In technical terms, they are a family of population-based trial and error problem solvers with a metaheuristic or stochastic optimization character.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Luc Steels</span> Belgian scientist and artist

Luc Steels is a Belgian scientist and artist. Steels is considered a pioneer of Artificial Intelligence in Europe who has made contributions to expert systems, behavior-based robotics, artificial life and evolutionary computational linguistics. He was a fellow of the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies ICREA associated as a research professor with the Institute for Evolutionary Biology (UPF/CSIC) in Barcelona. He was formerly founding Director of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and founding director of the Sony Computer Science Laboratory in Paris. Steels has also been active in the arts collaborating with visual artists and theater makers and composing music for opera.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Generative grammar</span> Research tradition in linguistics

Generative grammar is a research tradition in linguistics that aims to explain the cognitive basis of language by formulating and testing explicit models of humans' subconscious grammatical knowledge. Generative linguists, or generativists, tend to share certain working assumptions such as the competence–performance distinction and the notion that some domain-specific aspects of grammar are partly innate in humans. These assumptions are rejected in non-generative approaches such as usage-based models of language. Generative linguistics includes work in core areas such as syntax, semantics, phonology, psycholinguistics, and language acquisition, with additional extensions to topics including biolinguistics and music cognition.

The origin of language, its relationship with human evolution, and its consequences have been subjects of study for centuries. Scholars wishing to study the origins of language draw inferences from evidence such as the fossil record, archaeological evidence, contemporary language diversity, studies of language acquisition, and comparisons between human language and systems of animal communication. Many argue for the close relation between the origins of language and the origins of modern human behavior, but there is little agreement about the facts and implications of this connection.

Construction grammar is a family of theories within the field of cognitive linguistics which posit that constructions, or learned pairings of linguistic patterns with meanings, are the fundamental building blocks of human language. Constructions include words, morphemes, fixed expressions and idioms, and abstract grammatical rules such as the passive voice or the ditransitive. Any linguistic pattern is considered to be a construction as long as some aspect of its form or its meaning cannot be predicted from its component parts, or from other constructions that are recognized to exist. In construction grammar, every utterance is understood to be a combination of multiple different constructions, which together specify its precise meaning and form.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Henry Holland</span> American researcher in genetic algorithms (1929–2015)

John Henry Holland was an American scientist and professor of psychology and electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He was a pioneer in what became known as genetic algorithms.

Frame semantics is a theory of linguistic meaning developed by Charles J. Fillmore that extends his earlier case grammar. It relates linguistic semantics to encyclopedic knowledge. The basic idea is that one cannot understand the meaning of a single word without access to all the essential knowledge that relates to that word. For example, one would not be able to understand the word "sell" without knowing anything about the situation of commercial transfer, which also involves, among other things, a seller, a buyer, goods, money, the relation between the money and the goods, the relations between the seller and the goods and the money, the relation between the buyer and the goods and the money and so on. Thus, a word activates, or evokes, a frame of semantic knowledge relating to the specific concept to which it refers.

In the field of psychology, nativism is the view that certain skills or abilities are "native" or hard-wired into the brain at birth. This is in contrast to the "blank slate" or tabula rasa view, which states that the brain has inborn capabilities for learning from the environment but does not contain content such as innate beliefs. This factor contributes to the ongoing nature versus nurture dispute, one borne from the current difficulty of reverse engineering the subconscious operations of the brain, especially the human brain.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eduardo Reck Miranda</span> Musical artist

Eduardo Reck Miranda is a Brazilian composer of chamber and electroacoustic pieces but is most notable in the United Kingdom for his scientific research into computer music, particularly in the field of human-machine interfaces where brain waves will replace keyboards and voice commands to permit the disabled to express themselves musically.

Michael Studdert-Kennedy was an American psychologist and speech scientist 1927–2017.https://haskinslabs. We org/news/michael-studdert-kennedy. He is well known for his contributions to studies of speech perception, the motor theory of speech perception, and the evolution of language, among other areas. He is a professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Connecticut and a professor emeritus of linguistics at Yale University. He is the former president (1986–1992) of Haskins Laboratories in New Haven, Connecticut. He was also a member of the Haskins Laboratories Board of Directors and was chairman of the board from 1988 until 2001. He was the son of the priest and Christian socialist Geoffrey Studdert-Kennedy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Artificial development</span>

Artificial development, also known as artificial embryogeny or machine intelligence or computational development, is an area of computer science and engineering concerned with computational models motivated by genotype–phenotype mappings in biological systems. Artificial development is often considered a sub-field of evolutionary computation, although the principles of artificial development have also been used within stand-alone computational models.

Universal Darwinism, also known as generalized Darwinism, universal selection theory, or Darwinian metaphysics, is a variety of approaches that extend the theory of Darwinism beyond its original domain of biological evolution on Earth. Universal Darwinism aims to formulate a generalized version of the mechanisms of variation, selection and heredity proposed by Charles Darwin, so that they can apply to explain evolution in a wide variety of other domains, including psychology, linguistics, economics, culture, medicine, computer science, and physics.

James Raymond Hurford, FBA is a retired linguist and academic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Origin of speech</span>

The origin of speech differs from the origin of language because language is not necessarily spoken; it could equally be written or signed. Speech is a fundamental aspect of human communication and plays a vital role in the everyday lives of humans. It allows them to convey thoughts, emotions, and ideas, and providing the ability to connect with others and shape collective reality.

Morten H. Christiansen is a Danish cognitive scientist known for his work on the evolution of language, and connectionist modeling of human language acquisition. He is the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor in the Department of Psychology and Director of the Cognitive Science of Language Lab at Cornell University as well Senior Scientist at the Haskins Labs and Professor in the School of Communication and Culture at Aarhus University. He finished a PhD at the University of Edinburgh in 1995.

Theory of language is a topic in philosophy of language and theoretical linguistics. It has the goal of answering the questions "What is language?"; "Why do languages have the properties they do?"; or "What is the origin of language?". In addition to these fundamental questions, the theory of language also seeks to understand how language is acquired and used by individuals and communities. This involves investigating the cognitive and neural processes involved in language processing and production, as well as the social and cultural factors that shape linguistic behavior.

References

  1. "Cybraphon". Archived from the original on 4 July 2013. Retrieved 19 November 2009.
  2. "FOUND win BAFTA for Cybraphon". 9 November 2009. Retrieved 19 November 2009.