Skip to content

Professor Simon Kirby FBA

The origins and evolution of language; the interactions between individual cognition, cultural transmission and biological evolution in human populations; art / science collaboration
Fellow type
UK Fellow
Year elected
2019
Subjects
Linguistics
Sections
Linguistics and Philology
Website
https://www.ed.ac.uk/profile/simon-kirby

Current post

Professor of Language Evolution, University of Edinburgh; Director of the Centre for Language Evolution, University of Edinburgh

Past appointments

University of Edinburgh Director of Graduate School in Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences

Publications

Language Evolution

Edited by Morten H. Christiansen and Simon Kirby - Published in 2003 by Oxford University Press

Function, Selection and Innateness

Simon Kirby - Published in 1999 by Oxford University Press

Contextual predictability shapes signal autonomy

James Winters, Simon Kirby and Kenny Smith - Published in 2018 by Cognition

Self domestication and the evolution of language

James Thomas and Simon Kirby - Published in 2018 by Biology and Philosophy

Culture and biology in the origins of linguistic structure

Simon Kirby - Published in 2017 by Psychon Bull Rev

Zipf’s Law of Abbreviation and the Principle of Least Effort: Language users optimise a miniature lexicon for efficient communication

Jasmeen Kanwal, Kenny Smith, Jennifer Culbertson and Simon Kirby - Published in 2017 by Cognition

Musical evolution in the lab exhibits rhythmic universals

Andrea Ravignani, Tania Delgado and Simon Kirby - Published in 2017 by Nature Human Behaviour

Culture shapes the evolution of cognition

Bill Thompson, Simon Kirby, and Kenny Smith - Published in 2016 by PNAS

Compression and communication in the cultural evolution of linguistic structure

Simon Kirby, Monica Tamariz, Hannah Cornish and Kenny Smith - Published in 2015 by Cognition

Cultural evolution of systematically structured behaviour in a non-human primate

Nicolas Claidière, Kenny Smith, Simon Kirby and Joël Fagot - Published in 2014 by Proceedings of the Royal Society of London

Other Fellows of the British Academy

Professor Monika Schmid FBA

The psycho- and neurolinguistics of bilingual development, in particular first and second language attrition, that is, the effect of non-use on the accessibility, deterioration and maintenance of linguistic knowledge

Monika Schmid FBA

Professor Joan Bresnan FBA

Empirical foundations of syntax; corpus and experimental studies of variation in English grammar; cognitive architectures of grammar; the dynamics of probabilistic grammar; linguistic typology; Bantu morphosyntax; lexical-functional grammar

joan-bresnan.jpg

Professor Rajend Mesthrie FBA

Rajend Mesthrie FBA has published extensively on the socio-historical linguistics of Indian languages, African languages and English and Afrikaans in South Africa. At the same time his work on English as a global language and the sociolinguistics of Language Contact and Variation is widely recognised internationally.

Rajend-Mesthrie-FBA

Sign up to our email newsletters

Join our mailing list to explore the ideas and impact of the British Academy. Get updates on research, funding, policy, international collaborations, and events that bring the humanities and social sciences to life.