Greater learnability is not sufficient to produce cultural universals

Greater learnability is not sufficient to produce cultural universals.

Looking across human societies reveals regularities in the languages that people speak and the concepts that they use. One explanation that has been proposed for these "cultural universals" is differences in the ease with which people learn particular languages and concepts. A difference in learnability means that languages and concepts possessing a particular property are more likely to be acc...

produce cultural universals Anna

Looking across human societies reveals regularities in the languages that people speak and the concepts that they use. One explanation that has been proposed for these “cultural universals” is differences in the ease with which people learn particular languages and concepts. A difference in learnability means that languages and concepts possessing a particular property are more likely to be acc...

A metric entropy bound is not sufficient for learnability

Binding cooperativity in phage λ is not sufficient to produce an effective switch

In the wild type phage λ, binding of CI to OR2 helps polymerase bound to PRM transition from a closed to open complex. Activators on other promoters increase the polymerase-DNA binding energy, or affect both the binding energy and the closed-open transition probability. Using a validated mathematical model we show that these two modes of upregulation have very different effects on the promoter ...

Computational models of language universals: Expressiveness, learnability and consequences

Every linguist is struck by similarities among even the most different and most culturally isolated human languages. It is natural to assume that some of these common properties, these language universals, might reflect something about the way people can learn and use languages. In some relevant sense, some of these properties may arise and be maintained even in culturally isolated languages be...