Language origin and the effects of individuals' popularity

Abstract

The emergence of a compositional language with a simple grammar and the effects of individuals' popularity on the phylogeny of language are studied based on a multi-agent computational model. In this model, a bottom-up syntactic development is traced, in which the global syntax in sentences is gradually formed from local sequential information. Assuming that the popularity of individuals follows a power-law distribution, we demonstrate that a common language can emerge efficiently only for certain power-law distributions and that these distributions could also be formed as a result of the language phylogeny. © 2006 IEEE.link_to_subscribed_fulltex