{"id":{"repo_id":"mit","oai_identifier":"oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/9024"},"canonical_url":"https://search.dev.ndltd.org/etd/mit/oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/9024","repository":{"repo_id":"mit","name":"MIT","base_url":"https://dspace.mit.edu/oai/request"},"display":{"title":"Microevolutionary language theory","abstract":"A new microevolutionary theory of complex design within language is proposed. Experiments were carried out that support the theory that complex functional design - adaptive complexity - accumulates due to the evolutionary algorithm at the simplest levels within human natural language. A large software system was developed which identifies and tracks evolutionary dynamics within text discourse. With this system hundreds of examples of activity suggesting evolutionary significance were distilled from a text collection of many millions of words. Research contributions include: (1) An active replicator model of microevolutionary dynamics within natural language, (2) methods to distill active replicators offering evidence of evolutionary processes in action and at multiple linguistic levels (lexical, lexical co-occurrence, lexico-syntactic, and syntactic), (3) a demonstration that language evolution and organic evolution are both examples of a single over-arching evolutionary algorithm, (4) a set of tools to comparatively study language over time, and (5) methods to materially improve text retrieval.","abstract_html":"A new microevolutionary theory of complex design within language is proposed. Experiments were carried out that support the theory that complex functional design - adaptive complexity - accumulates due to the evolutionary algorithm at the simplest levels within human natural language. A large software system was developed which identifies and tracks evolutionary dynamics within text discourse. With this system hundreds of examples of activity suggesting evolutionary significance were distilled from a text collection of many millions of words. Research contributions include: (1) An active replicator model of microevolutionary dynamics within natural language, (2) methods to distill active replicators offering evidence of evolutionary processes in action and at multiple linguistic levels (lexical, lexical co-occurrence, lexico-syntactic, and syntactic), (3) a demonstration that language evolution and organic evolution are both examples of a single over-arching evolutionary algorithm, (4) a set of tools to comparatively study language over time, and (5) methods to materially improve text retrieval.","abstract_has_math":false,"creators":["Best, Michael Lloyd"],"institution":"Massachusetts Institute of Technology","degree_name":null,"degree_level":null,"degree_discipline":null,"degree_department":"Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 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