Cultural route to the emergence of linguistic categories
- 10 June 2008
- journal article
- Published by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Vol. 105 (23) , 7936-7940
- https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0802485105
Abstract
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 modeling 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.Keywords
All Related Versions
This publication has 21 references indexed in Scilit:
- The emergence of simple languages in an experimental coordination gameProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2007
- Semiotic dynamics and collaborative taggingProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2007
- Universality of color namesProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2006
- Sharp transition towards shared vocabularies in multi-agent systemsJournal of Statistical Mechanics: Theory and Experiment, 2006
- Semiotic Dynamics for Embodied AgentsIEEE Intelligent Systems, 2006
- Explaining Universal Color Categories Through a Constrained Acquisition ProcessAdaptive Behavior, 2005
- coordinating perceptually grounded categories through language: a case study for colourBehavioral and Brain Sciences, 2005
- Learned systems of arbitrary reference: The foundation of human linguistic uniquenessPublished by Cambridge University Press (CUP) ,2002
- Computational and evolutionary aspects of languageNature, 2002
- The Evolutionary Language GameJournal of Theoretical Biology, 1999