Oudeyer combines insights from neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and linguistics to explore questions about the origins of speech. He puts forward the startling proposal that speech can be spontaneously generated by the coupling of evolutionarily simple neural structures connecting perception and production. He tests this hypothesis through a computational system and shows that the linking of auditory and vocal motor neural nets produces syntactic rules that exhibit the fundamental properties of modern human speech systems. This fascinating account will interest all those interested in the evolution of speech.

Self-Organization in the Evolution of Speech (Studies in the Evolution of Language)

Reference

Hurford, James R.

Oudeyer, Pierre-Yves

Words, Language & Grammar

Oxford University Press

What is the origins of speech? How speech systems of languages form and evolve? How a child learns speech? Can robots invent and learn their own vocalisation system? How constructing robot can help us understand better humans? This book studies these questions, following a systemic approach, where the problem is approached globally. It gather human sciences, natural sciences and computational sciences within the same laboratory of ideas to explore the origins of language. It draws some parallels with the formation of biological structures like bee hives and shell shapes, and explore how self-organisation, in interaction with natural selection, can explain important aspects of the morphogenesis of speech. In particular, it presents robotic experiments in which a population of individuals, with models of the vocal tract and the auditory system, invent, form and negotiate its own system of combinatorial vocalisations, through local peer-to-peer interactions. It compares the emergent systems with human sound systems, and show that strong similarities can be observed. In this context, and from new perspectives on artificial intelligence, new scientific maps appear, and show us stimulating paths to the origins of speech.

Self-Organization in the Evolution of Speech (Oxford Studies in the Evolution of Language)

Foreign Language Study & Reference

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Books by Oudeyer, Pierre-Yves