Morten H. Christiansen

Morten H. Christiansen is a Danish Neurolinguist and cognitive scientist known for his work on the evolution of language, and connectionist modeling of human language acquisition. He is Professor in the Department of Psychology and Co-Director of the Cognitive Science Program at Cornell University as well Senior Scientist at the Haskins Labs and Professor in the Department of Language and Communication at the University of Southern Denmark.^[1] His research produced evidence for considering language to be a cultural system that emerges from the plasticity of neural networks, rather than from innate mental structures.^[2][3]

Selected publications

• Christiansen, M.H. & Chater, N. (2016). Creating language: Integrating evolution, acquisition, and processing. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Richerson, P.J. & Christiansen, M.H. (Eds.) (2013).Cultural evolution: Society, technology, language and religion. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Christiansen, M.H., Collins, C. & Edelman, S. (Eds.) (2009). Language universals. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Christiansen, M.H. & Kirby, S. (Eds.) (2003). Language evolution. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press.
• Christiansen, M.H. & Chater, N. (Eds.) (2001). Connectionist psycholinguistics. Westport, CT: Ablex.

References

1. http://cnl.psych.cornell.edu/people.html
2. http://learningenglish.voanews.com/content/a-23-2006-08-02-voa1-83129957/117270.html
3. http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2009/01/culture-not-biology-drives-evolution-language