Language Evolution and Computation Bibliography

We present a connectionist model that demonstrates how propositional structure can emerge from the interactions among the members of a community of simple cognitive agents. We first describe a process in which agents coordinating their actions and verbal productions with each other in a shared world leads to the development of propositional structures. We then present a simulation model which implements this process for generating propositions from scratch. We report and discuss the behaviour of the model in terms of its ability to produce three properties of propositions: (1) a coherent lexicon characterised by shared form-meaning mappings; (2) conventional structure in the sequences of forms; (3) the prediction of spatial facts. We show that these properties do not emerge when a single individual learns the task alone and conclude that the properties emerge from the demands of the communication task rather than from anything inside the individual agents. We then show that the shared structural principles can be described as a grammar, and discuss the implications of this demonstration for theories concerning the origins of the structure of language.

The cognitive revolution of the 1950's spawned development of the Turing Machine model of Mind (TMM) entailing both the formalism and practice of casting human cognition in the image of a digital computer. With the TMM, the mechanism of knowing (processing over internal knowledge states) could be integrated with the content of what is known (the mental products of histories of social living). This integration promoted the division of labor among psychologists and anthropologists which persists in many modern studies of mind and culture. This paper presents an alternative model of mind -- the Distributed Cognition model of Mind (DCM) -- based upon a reconstruction of the natures of, and relationships between, culture and cognition. The DCM is founded upon the notions that (1) cognition is built out of interactions among structures, (2) these interactions (instances of processes which employ and create structures) are not limited to events internal to individuals, but distribute across diverse media, social space, and time, and (3) culture is itself such a process, generating many of the structures and processes constituting cognition and human intelligence. The model is supported by data collected during ethnographic fieldwork among fishermen of an island community off the west coast of Sweden. Data analysis demonstrates the negotiated, distributed, and experientially grounded nature of language employed to communicate about sonar images of herring which mediate fishermen's understandings and practice.

In this paper, we elaborate upon the framework by considering more explicitly the problem of creating shared symbolic structure. A lexicon is (among other things) a set of public structures for denoting or implicating shared meanings. In other words, the existence of a lexicon requires the sharing of forms and meanings -- and mappings between these -- among members of an interacting population of agents. Leaving aside cosmic and theological events which could create such an outcome, how could a lexicon come to be? The solution provided here is based upon a convergence of agents' schemes for classifying visual phenomena. All agents have a capacity for such classification, but convergence upon a singular scheme is shaped by the constraints for consensus when employing the scheme in interaction with other agents.

In this paper, we introduce a framework for simulating cultural process. The general idea is to simulate a world in which learning agents create external structures which mediate their behavior. This simulation demonstrates the simple (but very important) concept that such a system is capable, through generations of time, of producing agents endowed with cognitive powers that are not attainable in the lifetime of any individual agent. We argue that such an outcome is possible without effecting the genetic organization of individuals. However, we also argue that the cultural process is capable of guiding both learning and phylogenetic evolution, which leaves open the possiblity of genetic organization tracking cultural process.