Language Evolution and Computation Bibliography

This chapter studies three strategies giving rise to color categories and descriptions for them: a strategy for basic hue terms (“yellow”,“blue”,“green”, etc.), for brightness terms (“shiny”,“dull”, etc.) and for graded membership terms (as in:“very blue” or “slightly blue”). ...

A computational language game model is presented that shows how a population of language users can evolve from a brightness-based to a brightness+hue-based color term system. The shift is triggered by a change in the communication challenges posed by the environment, comparable to what happened in English during the Middle English period in response to the rise of dyeing and textile manufacturing c. 1150--1500. In a previous model that is able to explain such a shift, these two color categorization strategies were explicitly represented. This is not needed in our model. Instead, whether a population evolves a brightness-or a hue-based system is an emergent phenomenon that depends only on environmental factors. In this way, the model provides an explanation of how such a shift may come about without introducing additional mechanisms that would require further explanation.

Recursion is considered to be one of the hallmarks of human communication. Many theories have been proposed on how this important feature might once have originated. This paper critically examines previously proposed models and posits a new and clearly defined hypothesis: recursion might originate from language users who try to reuse as much of their previously gained linguistic knowledge as possible. We support this claim by providing results of a multi-agent computer simulation in which the agents invent their own communication system encompassing a recursive syntactic category system.

Color categories enjoy a special status among human perceptual categories as they exhibit a remarkable cross-cultural similarity. Many scholars have explained this universal character as being the result of an innate representation or an innate developmental program which all humans share. We will critically assess the available evidence, which is at best controversial, and we will suggest an alternative account for the universality of color categories based on linguistic transmission constrained by universal biases. We introduce a computational model to test our hypothesis and present results. These show that indeed the cultural acquisition of color categories together with mild constraints on the perception and categorical representation result in categories that have a distribution similar to human color categories.