Language Evolution and Computation Bibliography

We deal here with the problem of the origin of language from the point of view of pragmatics. Our aim is to show that any scenario of language origin should explain the relevance phenomenon. Why do people feel obliged to be relevant in casual conversation ? Analysing the structure of relevance leads to unexpected conclusions : relevant information is valuable, therefore language seems to be altruistic. As a consequence, from a Darwinian perspective, speakers should be rare and continually prompted for their knowledge. What we observe, however, is the exact opposite : in many situations, speakers repeatedly strive to make their point, while listeners systematically evaluate what they hear. A possible solution to this paradox is that language is not altruistic and that relevant information is traded for status. The observation of spontaneous conversation provides some evidence that supports such a hypothesis.

The paper reports on experiments in which robotic agents and software agents are set up to originate language and meaning. The experiments test the hypothesis that mechanisms for generating complexity commonly found in biosystems, in particular self-organisation, co-evolution, and level formation, also may explain the spontaneous formation, adaptation, and growth in complexity of language.

A model of simple agents capable of sending and receiving se- quences of characters and associating them with elements of a set of structured meanings is used to explore the emergence of systematic communication. In computational simulations, each member of a population alternates between learning to interpret the sequences sent by other members, and sending sequences that others learn to interpret. Eventually the agents develop highly coordinated communication systems that incorporate structural regularities reminiscent of those in human languages.