Culture and biology in the origins of linguistic structure

Language is systematically structured at all levels of description, arguably setting it apart from all other instances of communication in nature. In this article, I survey work over the last 20 years that emphasises the contributions of individual learning, cultural transmission, and biological evolution to explaining the structural design features of language. These 3 complex adaptive systems exist in a network of interactions: individual learning biases shape the dynamics of cultural evolution; universal features of linguistic structure arise from this cultural process and form the ultimate linguistic phenotype; the nature of this phenotype affects the fitness landscape for the biological evolution of the language faculty; and in turn this determines individuals’ learning bias. Using a combination of computational simulation, laboratory experiments, and comparison with real-world cases of language emergence, I show that linguistic structure emerges as a natural outcome of cultural evolution once certain minimal biological requirements are in place

Fuzzy clusterwise quasi-likelihood generalized linear models

Generalized linear models, Quasi-likelihood, Fuzzy clustering, Regularization by entropy, Cluster-level heterogeneity, Coupon redemption, 62 Statistics,

Emission of biogenic volatile organic compounds : an overview of field, laboratory and modelling studies performed during the tropospheric research programm (TFS) 1997 - 2000

The present paper summarises results on the emission of biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOC) achieved within the frame of the national'German Tropospheric Research Programme' (TFS) between 1997 and 2000. Field measurements were carried out at the meteorological monitoring station `Hartheimer Wald' located in the vicinity of Freiburg (upper Rhine valley), Germany, within a pine plantation dominated by Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.). The measured BVOC emission rates were used to determine the daily and seasonal variation of BVOC emission and its dependence on important meteorological and plant physiological parameters. In parallel, laboratory experiments using young trees of pine (P. sylvestris), poplar (Populus tremula xP. alba) and pedunculate oak (Quercus robur L.) were performed, and the influence of abiotic (e.g., light, temperature, seasonality, flooding) factors on the biosynthesis and emission of BVOC was quantified. Based on these data, emission algorithms were evaluated and a process-oriented numerical model for the simulation of the isoprene emission by plants was developed. In addition, newly calculated land use and tree species distributions were used for the calculation of an actual BVOC emission inventory of Germany