Detailed comparative studies have revealed many surface similarities between linguistic
communication and the communication of nonhumans. How should we interpret these …

Language is an essential part of what makes us human. Where did it come from? How did it
develop into the complex system we know today? And what can an evolutionary perspective …

Human expression is open-ended, versatile, and diverse, ranging from ordinary language
use to painting, from exaggerated displays of affection to micro-movements that aid …

Language's expressive power is largely attributable to its compositionality: meaningful
words are combined into larger/higher-order structures with derived meaning. Despite its …

Identifying universal principles underpinning diverse natural systems is a key goal of the life
sciences. A powerful approach in addressing this goal has been to test whether patterns …

Human languages are transmitted by iterated learning: we learn the language of our speech
community by observing language use in communicative interaction, and then in turn we …

Recent work suggests that linguistic structure develops through cultural evolution, as a
consequence of the repeated cycle of learning and use by which languages persist. This …

How human language evolved from the need for social communication The origins of
human language remain hotly debated. Despite growing appreciation of cognitive and …

Portions of this work were presented in “Using biologging technology to study vocal
sequences in narwhals” at the Easter meeting of the Association for the Study of Animal …

The paper offers a design perspective on protocell applications and presents original
research that characterizes the life-like qualities of the Bütschli dynamic droplet system, as a …