Questions pertaining to the unique structure and organisation of language have a
long history in the field of linguistics. In recent years, researchers have explored
cultural evolutionary explanations, showing how language structure emerges from
weak biases amplified over repeated patterns of learning and use. One outstanding
issue in these frameworks is accounting for the role of context. In particular,
many linguistic phenomena are said to to be context-dependent; interpretation
does not take place in a void, and requires enrichment from the current state
of the conversation, the physical situation, and common knowledge about the
world. Modelling the relationship between language structure and context is
therefore crucial for developing a cultural evolutionary approach to language.
One approach is to use statistical analyses to investigate large-scale, cross-cultural
datasets. However, due to the inherent limitations of statistical analyses, especially
with regards to the inadequacy of these methods to test hypotheses about
causal relationships, I argue that experiments are better suited to address questions
pertaining to language structure and context. From here, I present a series
of artificial language experiments, with the central aim being to test how
manipulations to context influence the structure and organisation of language.
Experiment 1 builds upon previous work in iterated learning and communication
games through demonstrating that the emergence of optimal communication systems
is contingent on the contexts in which languages are learned and used. The
results show that language systems gradually evolve to only encode information
that is informative for conveying the intended meaning of the speaker - resulting
in markedly different systems of communication. Whereas Experiment 1 focused
on how context influences the emergence of structure, Experiments 2 and 3 investigate
under what circumstances do manipulations to context result in the loss
of structure. While the results are inconclusive across these two experiments,
there is tentative evidence that manipulations to context can disrupt structure,
but only when interacting with other factors. Lastly, Experiment 4 investigates
whether the degree of signal autonomy (the capacity for a signal to be interpreted without recourse to contextual information) is shaped by manipulations
to contextual predictability: the extent to which a speaker can estimate and exploit
contextual information a hearer uses in interpreting an utterance. When
the context is predictable, speakers organise languages to be less autonomous
(more context-dependent) through combining linguistic signals with contextual
information to reduce effort in production and minimise uncertainty in comprehension.
By decreasing contextual predictability, speakers increasingly rely on
strategies that promote more autonomous signals, as these signals depend less on
contextual information to discriminate between possible meanings. Overall, these
experiments provide proof-of-concept for investigating the relationship between
language structure and context, showing that the organisational principles underpinning
language are the result of competing pressures from context, cognition,
and communication