63,402 research outputs found
Cultural route to the emergence of linguistic categories
Categories provide a coarse grained description of the world. A fundamental
question is whether categories simply mirror an underlying structure of nature,
or instead come from the complex interactions of human beings among themselves
and with the environment. Here we address this question by modelling a
population of individuals who co-evolve their own system of symbols and
meanings by playing elementary language games. The central result is the
emergence of a hierarchical category structure made of two distinct levels: a
basic layer, responsible for fine discrimination of the environment, and a
shared linguistic layer that groups together perceptions to guarantee
communicative success. Remarkably, the number of linguistic categories turns
out to be finite and small, as observed in natural languages.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figure
Historical implications of a linguistic environment - towards a systemic approach
The aim of our project B6 âTowards a genesis of the ethnolinguistic situation at the southern and western fringes of lake Chad basinâ within SFB 268 âWest African Savannahâ is to analyse the emergence and development of the complex presentday ethnolinguistic patterns in a region which may be historically labelled as southern and western periphery of the Borno empire. For the first time, a model of migratory routes was put forward based on combined research efforts of the disciplines involved in our project. Below we shall attempt to summarise the main points and reflections of our findings. Our specific approach as a whole is based on applying the respective research methods of the individual disciplines represented in our project, namely anthropology, ethnomusicology, history and linguistics and eventually on integrating the results into a systemically coherent pictur
Modeling the emergence of universality in color naming patterns
The empirical evidence that human color categorization exhibits some
universal patterns beyond superficial discrepancies across different cultures
is a major breakthrough in cognitive science. As observed in the World Color
Survey (WCS), indeed, any two groups of individuals develop quite different
categorization patterns, but some universal properties can be identified by a
statistical analysis over a large number of populations. Here, we reproduce the
WCS in a numerical model in which different populations develop independently
their own categorization systems by playing elementary language games. We find
that a simple perceptual constraint shared by all humans, namely the human Just
Noticeable Difference (JND), is sufficient to trigger the emergence of
universal patterns that unconstrained cultural interaction fails to produce. We
test the results of our experiment against real data by performing the same
statistical analysis proposed to quantify the universal tendencies shown in the
WCS [Kay P and Regier T. (2003) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 100: 9085-9089], and
obtain an excellent quantitative agreement. This work confirms that synthetic
modeling has nowadays reached the maturity to contribute significantly to the
ongoing debate in cognitive science.Comment: Supplementery Information available here
http://www.pnas.org/content/107/6/2403/suppl/DCSupplementa
Modeling the emergence of contact languages
Contact languages are born out of the non-trivial interaction of two (or more) parent languages.
Nowadays, the enhanced possibility of mobility and communication allows for a
strong mixing of languages and cultures, thus raising the issue of whether there are any
pure languages or cultures that are unaffected by contact with others. As with bacteria or viruses
in biological evolution, the evolution of languages is marked by horizontal transmission;
but to date no reliable quantitative tools to investigate these phenomena have been
available. An interesting and well documented example of contact language is the emergence
of creole languages, which originated in the contacts of European colonists and
slaves during the 17th and 18th centuries in exogenous plantation colonies of especially the
Atlantic and Indian Ocean. Here, we focus on the emergence of creole languages to demonstrate
a dynamical process that mimics the process of creole formation in American and
Caribbean plantation ecologies. Inspired by the Naming Game (NG), our modeling scheme
incorporates demographic information about the colonial population in the framework of a
non-trivial interaction network including three populations: Europeans, Mulattos/Creoles,
and Bozal slaves. We show how this sole information makes it possible to discriminate territories
that produced modern creoles from those that did not, with a surprising accuracy. The
generality of our approach provides valuable insights for further studies on the emergence
of languages in contact ecologies as well as to test specific hypotheses about the peopling
and the population structures of the relevant territories. We submit that these tools could be
relevant to addressing problems related to contact phenomena in many cultural domains:
e.g., emergence of dialects, language competition and hybridization,
globalization phenomena
A fast no-rejection algorithm for the Category Game
The Category Game is a multi-agent model that accounts for the emergence of
shared categorization patterns in a population of interacting individuals. In
the framework of the model, linguistic categories appear as long lived
consensus states that are constantly reshaped and re-negotiated by the
communicating individuals. It is therefore crucial to investigate the long time
behavior to gain a clear understanding of the dynamics. However, it turns out
that the evolution of the emerging category system is so slow, already for
small populations, that such an analysis has remained so far impossible. Here,
we introduce a fast no-rejection algorithm for the Category Game that
disentangles the physical simulation time from the CPU time, thus opening the
way for thorough analysis of the model. We verify that the new algorithm is
equivalent to the old one in terms of the emerging phenomenology and we
quantify the CPU performances of the two algorithms, pointing out the neat
advantages offered by the no-rejection one. This technical advance has already
opened the way to new investigations of the model, thus helping to shed light
on the fundamental issue of categorization.Comment: 17 pages, 7 figure
Topography of Generically Folded Spacecapes: Towards a Cognitive Metatheory in Architectural Design
If we visualize philosophy as a science of the sciences (in the tradition of Hans Heinz Holz), then theories within the philosophical framework are always meta-theories of the respective field of interest in question with which philosophy is actually dealing. Hence, a philosophy of architecture in particular, shows up as a meta-theory of theories of architecture with respect to all the possible conditions that are necessary to actually constitute its characteristic field of interest (including the social modes of communication). As we can easily see, it is also a cognitive meta-theory in the first place (i.e. one of the human condition). If then, traditionally, philosophy can also be visualized as being primarily constituted by four components that turn to its topic, namely by means of historical analysis, scientific approach, aesthetical and
ethical conceptualizations, respectively, we can recognize that the second and the third overlap somehow with the architectural activities. This is certainly true since the establishment of architecture as a field of activity of its own, separated from building and engineering, as was achieved in the epoch of the Italian Renaissance by Brunelleschi, Alberti, and others.Peer Reviewe
âEthnic groupâ, the state and the politics of representation
The assertion, even if only by implication, that âethnic groupâ categories represent ârealâ tangible entities, indeed identities, is commonplace not only in the realms of political and policy discourse but also amongst contemporary social scientists. This paper, following Brubaker (2002), questions this position in a number of key respects: of these three issues will dominate the discussion that follows.
First, there is an interrogation of the proposition that those to whom the categories/labels refer constitute sociologically meaningful âgroupsâ as distinct from (mere) human collectivities. Secondly, there is the question of how these categories emerge, i.e. exactly what series of events, negotiations and contestations lie behind their construction and social acceptance. Thirdly, and as a corollary to the latter point, we explore the process of reification that leads to these categories being seen to represent âreal things in the worldâ (ibid.)
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