Language evolution: the contribution of computational models

The last decade has seen an upsurge of interest in the question of
language evolution within the broader area of the evolution of the
human mind. It has been a multidisciplinary effort, but resorting to
computational modelling to constrain and simulate the alleged
dynamics of the process has been crucial for the respectability of
the effort. Several formal approaches have been applied: evolutionary
game theory, genetic algorithms, artificial life multiagents,
connectionist simulations. In this presentation, I will introduce
some of the hot issues in this area, and will focus on a particular
question: whether the evolution of language involved the selection of
a "language acquisition device", an innate mechanism specific for the
learning of a language. It is as regards this question that the
computational models have proved most critical: I will review some of
the relevant contributions in this respect.