This is a new and groundbreaking study ofho w children acquire language and howthis affects language change over the generations. Written by an international team ofe xperts, the volume proceeds from the basis that we should address not only the language faculty per se within the framework of evolutionary theory, but also the origins and subsequent development oflanguages themselves; languages evolve via cultural rather than biological transmission on a historical rather than genetic timescale. The book is distinctive in utilizing computational simulation and modeling to help ensure that the theories constructed are complete and precise. Drawing on a wide range ofe xamples, the book covers the why and how ofspecific syntactic universals, the nature ofsyntactic change, the language-learning mechanisms needed to acquire an existing linguistic system accurately and to impose further structure on an emerging system, and the evolution oflanguage(s) in relation to this learning mechanism.