Songs to Syntax: Cognition, Computation, and the Origin of Language

MIT Professor Robert Berwick discusses the evolution of human language and specifically how underlying syntax arose via the introduction of a single, surprisingly simple operation that “glues” words and sentence parts together. The relation of this simple syntax to human sensory-motor and thought systems reveals language to be asymmetric in design. While it precisely matches the representations required for inner mental thought, it also poses computational difficulties for understanding sentences, as everyday experience demonstrates. Despite this mismatch, one can show that language syntax leads directly to the rich cognitive array that marks us as a symbolic species, including mathematics, music, and much more.