Iterated learning and grounding: from holistic to compositional languages

This paper presents a new computational model for studying the origins and evolution of compositional languages grounded through the interaction between agents and their environment. The model is based on previous work on adaptive grounding of lexicons and the iterated learning model. Although the model is still in a developmental phase, the first results show that a compositional language can emerge in which the structure reflects regularities present in the population's environment

Reflexivity, Functional Reference, and Modularity: Alternative Targets for Language Origins

Researchers in language origins typically try to explain how compositional communication might evolve to bridge the gap between animal communication and natural language. However, as an explanatory target, compositionality has been shown to be problematic for a gradualist approach to the evolution of language. In this paper, I suggest that reflexivity provides an apt and plausible alternative target which does not succumb to the problems that compositionality faces. I further explain how proto-reflexivity, which depends upon functional reference, gives rise to complex communication systems via modular composition

Does Meaning Evolve?

A common method of making a theory more understandable, is by comparing it to another theory which has been better developed. Radical interpretation is a theory which attempts to explain how communication has meaning. Radical interpretation is treated as another time-dependent theory and compared to the time dependent theory of biological evolution. The main reason for doing this is to find the nature of the time dependence; producing analogs between the two theories is a necessary prerequisite to this and brings up many problems. Once the nature of the time dependence is better known it might allow the underlying mechanism to be uncovered. Several similarities and differences are uncovered, there appear to be more differences than similarities.Comment: title changed, completely rewritten, new version 37 pages previous version 28 pages, to appear in Behaviour and Philosoph

Does Meaning Evolove?

A common method of improving how well understood a theory is, is by comparing it to another theory which has been better developed. Radical interpretation is a theory which attempts to explain how communication has meaning. Radical interpretation is treated as another time dependent theory and compared to the time dependent theory of biological evolution. Several similarities and differences are uncovered. Biological evolution can be gradual or punctuated. Whether radical interpretation is gradual or punctuated depends on how the question is framed: on the coarse-grained time scale it proceeds gradually, but on the fine-grained time scale it proceeds by punctuated equilibria. Biological evolution proceeds by natural selection, the counterpart to this is the increase in both correspondence and coherence. Exaption, mutations, and spandrels have counterparts metaphor, speech errors, and puns respectively. Homologous and analogs have direct counterparts in specific words. The most important differences originate from the existence of a unit of inheritance (the traditional gene) occurring in biological evolution - there is no such unit in language

A Survey on Modeling Language Evolution in the New Millennium

AbstractLanguage is a complex evolving system and it is not a trivial task to model the dynamics of processes occurring during its evolution. Therefore, modeling language evolution has attracted the interest of several researchers giving rise to a lot of models in the literature of the last millennium. This work reviews the literature devoted to computationally represent the evolution of human language through formal models and provides an analysis of the bibliographic production and scientific impact of the surveyed language evolution models to give some conclusions about current trends and future perspectives of this research field. The survey provides also an overview of the strategies for validating and comparing the different language evolution models and how these techniques have been applied by the surveyed models

Using Logic to Evolve More Logic: Composing Logical Operators via Self-Assembly

I consider how complex logical operations might self-assemble in a signalling-game context via composition of simpler underlying dispositions. On the one hand, agents may take advantage of pre-evolved dispositions; on the other hand, they may co-evolve dispositions as they simultaneously learn to combine them to display more complex behaviour. In either case, the evolution of complex logical operations can be more efficient than evolving such capacities from scratch. Showing how complex phenomena like these might evolve provides an additional path to the possibility of evolving more or less rich notions of compositionality. This helps provide another facet of the evolutionary story of how sufficiently rich, human-level cognitive or linguistic capacities may arise from simpler precursors