Discrete and systematic communication in a continuous signal-meaning space

Abstract

Human spoken language uses a continuous stream of acoustic signals to communicate about continuous features of the world, by using discrete forms — words — that segment the world into categories. Here we investigate how discreteness (the segmentation of a continuous signal space into discrete forms) and systematicity (the consistent alignment of these forms with what they refer to in the world) can emerge under communicative pressure. In an exploratory study, participants were paired with one another and played a game in which they varied the pitch of auditory signals to communicate about a continuous color space, generalizing from a small, shared set of signal-color pairings. The emergent systems exhibited both discreteness and systematicity, but only systematicity robustly predicted successful communication. These findings offer insight into the cognitive strategies that could support the creation and evolution of language, highlighting how pressures for effective communication can shape continuous signal spaces into structured, learnable systems