Language Evolution and Computation Bibliography

We present a series of studies investigating the formation, generative power, and evolution of toponyms (i.e. topographic names). The domain chosen for this project is the spatial concepts related to movement through the environment, one of the key sets of concepts to be grounded in autonomous agents. Concepts for spatial locations cannot be directly perceived and require representations built from interactions and inferred from ambiguous sensory data. A generative toponymic language game has been developed to allow the agents to interact, forming concepts for locations and spatial relations. The studies have shown that a grounded generative toponymic language may form and evolve in a population of agents interacting through language games. Initially, terms are grounded in simple spatial concepts directly experienced by the robots. The generative process then enables the robots to learn about and refer to locations beyond their direct experience, enabling concepts and toponyms to co-evolve.