Language Evolution and Computation Bibliography

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2000 :: PROCEEDINGS
SAB00
Attractors in the Development of CommunicationPDF
SAB00, 2000
Abstract The development of communication in a population of agents is viewed as the behavior of a dynamical system. A deterministic communication system is shown, both experimentally and theoretically, to have point attractors that correspond to perfect ...
Talk is cheap: Evolved strategies for communication and action in asymmetrical animal contestsPDF
SAB00, pages 481-490, 2000
Abstract Animal contests over resources are often settled by displays rather than fighting. Contests may involve asymmetries that cannot be perceived, such as unequal fighting ability. Classical gametheoretic accounts suggest that talk is cheap, and that honest ...
Grounding Language About Actions: Mobile Robots Playing Follow Me GamesPDF
SAB00, 2000
Abstract This paper presents a new experiment that has been carried out in the context of the research on the origins of language that is going on at the Free University of Brussels. Two mobile robots ground time series of motor commands into categories. The ...
Social Order in Multiagent Systems: Workshop on Norms and Institutions in Multi-Agent Systems (Held in Conjunction with Autonomous Agents'2000)
The Formation of Common Norms on the Assumption of `Fundamentally' Imperfect InformationPDF
Social Order in Multiagent Systems: Workshop on Norms and Institutions in Multi-Agent Systems (Held in conjunction with Autonomous Agents'2000), 2000
Abstract The role of social norms is to process' fundamentally'imperfect information. Information about future events, often needed in economic activity, is inevitably imperfect, since there's no way to check its correctness from our subjective viewpoint. The reason to ...
Agents'2000: Workshop on Agent Communication Languages
Towards Automating the Evolution of Linguistic Competence in Artificial AgentsPDF
Agents'2000: Workshop on Agent Communication Languages, 2000
Artificial Life VII
Semiotic schemata: Selection units for linguistic cultural evolutionPDF
Artificial Life VII, 2000
Abstract Words, like genes, are replicators in competition to colonize our brains. Some, by luck or thanks to their intrinsic qualities, manage to spread in entire populations. In this paper we take the approach of cultural selectionism to study the emergence of ...
The cultural evolution of syntactic constraints in phonologyPDF
Artificial Life VII, 2000
Abstract The paper reports on an experiment in which a group of autonomous agents self-organises through cultural evolution constraints on the combination of the individual sounds (phonemes) in their repertoires. We use a selectionist approach whereby a repertoire ...
Proceedings of the CELE-Twente Workshop on Interacting Agents
Talking aibo: First experimentation of verbal interactions with an autonomous four-legged robotPDF
Proceedings of the CELE-Twente workshop on interacting agents, 2000
Abstract The aim of the'Talking AIBO'project is to build a system enabling the AIBO, Sony's autonomous four-legged robot, to learn how to interact with humans using real words. We review in this article an experiment in which the robot builds a vocabulary concerning the ...
Workshop on the Evolution of Language in Belgium and the Netherlands
Computational Models of Language Change and DiversityPDF
Workshop on the Evolution of Language in Belgium and the Netherlands, 2000
Millenial Perspectives in Computer Science (Proceedings of the 1999 Oxford-Microsoft Symposium in Honour of Sir Tony Hoare)
Principles of Language Design and EvolutionPDF
Millenial Perspectives in Computer Science (Proceedings of the 1999 Oxford-Microsoft Symposium in Honour of Sir Tony Hoare), pages 229-246, 2000
Heeded or not, Tony Hoare's Hints on Programming Language Design [1] remains, more than 25 years after publication, the principal source of wisdom on how to produce sound programming languages. I will try to expand on Hoare's principles by presenting some of ...
EuroGP 2000
EuroGP 2000, pages 149-162, 2000
Abstract. Grammatical Evolution is an evolutionary algorithm which can produce code in any language, requiring as inputs a BNF grammar definition describing the output language, and the fitness function. The usefulness of crossover in GP systems has been hotly debated for ...
Third International Conference on the Evolution of Language
Incremental Simulations of the Emergence of Grammar: Towards Complex Sentence-Meaning MappingsPDF
Third International Conference on the Evolution of Language, pages 187-190, 2000
Experiments with societies of communicating agents have shown that various communication conventions can emerge in order to express the structure of situations in an environment (eg, Batali 1998, Steels 1997). However, it is often unclear how much implicit ...
Proceedings of the Third Sony CSL Paris Symposium: The Ecological Brain
A brain for language
Proceedings of the Third Sony CSL Paris Symposium: The ecological brain, 2000
Proceedings of PPSN VI
Proceedings of PPSN VI, 2000
The paper surveys recent work on modeling the origins of communication systems in groups of autonomous distributed agents. It is shown that five principles gleaned from biology are crucial: reinforcement learning, self-organisation, selectionism, co-evolution through structural ...MORE ⇓
The paper surveys recent work on modeling the origins of communication systems in groups of autonomous distributed agents. It is shown that five principles gleaned from biology are crucial: reinforcement learning, self-organisation, selectionism, co-evolution through structural coupling, and level formation.
ECAI2000
The Emergence of Grammar in Communicating Autonomous Robotic AgentsPDF
ECAI2000, pages 764-769, 2000
Over the past five years, the topic of the origins of language is gaining prominence as one of the big unresolved questions of cognitive science. Artificial Intelligence can make a major contribution to this problem by working out precise, testable models using grounded robotic ...MORE ⇓
Over the past five years, the topic of the origins of language is gaining prominence as one of the big unresolved questions of cognitive science. Artificial Intelligence can make a major contribution to this problem by working out precise, testable models using grounded robotic agents which interact with a real world environment and communicate among themselves or with humans about this environment. A potential side effect op this basic research are new technologies for man-machine interaction based on the negotiation of shared conventions.
Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 12, (NIPS*99)
Evolving learnable languagesPDF
Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 12, (NIPS*99), pages 66-72, 2000
Traditional theories of child language acquisition center around the existence of a language acquisition device which is specifically tuned for learning a particular class of languages. More recent proposals suggest that language acquisition is assisted by the evolution of ...MORE ⇓
Traditional theories of child language acquisition center around the existence of a language acquisition device which is specifically tuned for learning a particular class of languages. More recent proposals suggest that language acquisition is assisted by the evolution of languages towards forms that are easily learnable. In this paper, we evolve combinatorial languages which can be learned by a simple recurrent network quickly and from relatively few examples. Additionally, we evolve languages for generalization in different ``worlds'', and for generalization from specific examples. We find that languages can be evolved to facilitate different forms of impressive generalization for a minimally biased learner. The results provide empirical support for the theory that the language itself, as well as the language environment of a learner, plays a substantial role in learning: that there is far more to language acquisition than the language acquisition device.
Proceedings of the Twenty-second Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society
Selective advantages of syntactic language - a model studyPDF
Proceedings of the Twenty-second Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, pages 577-582, 2000
We study a computational model of the evolution of language in groups of agents to evaluate under which circumstances syntax emerges. The fitness in the model depends on the composition of the population. We find that this fact significantly alters the evolutionary ...
2000 :: JOURNAL
Nature
Nature 404:495-498, 2000
Animal communication is typically non-syntactic, which means that signals refer to whole situations. Human language is syntactic, and signals consist of discrete components that have their own meaning. Syntax is a prerequisite for taking advantage of combinatorics, that is, ...MORE ⇓
Animal communication is typically non-syntactic, which means that signals refer to whole situations. Human language is syntactic, and signals consist of discrete components that have their own meaning. Syntax is a prerequisite for taking advantage of combinatorics, that is, 'making infinite use of finite means'. The vast expressive power of human language would be impossible without syntax, and the transition from non-syntactic to syntactic communication was an essential step in the evolution of human language. We aim to understand the evolutionary dynamics of this transition and to analyse how natural selection can guide it. Here we present a model for the population dynamics of language evolution, define the basic reproductive ratio of words and calculate the maximum size of a lexicon. Syntax allows larger repertoires and the possibility to formulate messages that have not been learned beforehand. Nevertheless, according to our model natural selection can only favour the emergence of syntax if the number of required signals exceeds a threshold value. This result might explain why only humans evolved syntactic communication and hence complex language.
Nature 404:441-442, 2000
There are no fossils to show how language evolved. But evolutionary game theory is revealing how some of the defining features of human language could have been shaped by natural selection.
Science
Science 288:527-531, 2000
This study shows that a corpus of proto-word forms shares four sequential sound patterns with words of modern languages and the first words of infants. Three of the patterns involve intrasyllabic consonant-vowel (CV) co-occurrence: labial (lip) consonants with central vowels, ...MORE ⇓
This study shows that a corpus of proto-word forms shares four sequential sound patterns with words of modern languages and the first words of infants. Three of the patterns involve intrasyllabic consonant-vowel (CV) co-occurrence: labial (lip) consonants with central vowels, coronal (tongue front) consonants with front vowels, and dorsal (tongue back) consonants with back vowels. The fourth pattern is an intersyllabic preference for initiating words with a labial consonant-vowel-coronal consonant sequence (LC). The CV effects may be primarily biomechanically motivated. The LC effect may be self-organizational, with multivariate causality. The findings support the hypothesis that these four patterns were basic to the origin of words.
Science 288(5464):349-351, 2000
Humans, but no other animal, make meaningful use of spoken language. What is unclear, however, is whether this capacity depends on a unique constellation of perceptual and neurobiological mechanisms or whether a subset of such mechanisms is shared with other organisms. To explore ...MORE ⇓
Humans, but no other animal, make meaningful use of spoken language. What is unclear, however, is whether this capacity depends on a unique constellation of perceptual and neurobiological mechanisms or whether a subset of such mechanisms is shared with other organisms. To explore this problem, parallel experiments were conducted on human newborns and cotton-top tamarin monkeys to assess their ability to discriminate unfamiliar languages. A habituation-dishabituation procedure was used to show that human newborns and tamarins can discriminate sentences from Dutch and Japanese but not if the sentences are played backward. Moreover, the cues for discrimination are not present in backward speech. This suggests that the human newborns' tuning to certain properties of speech relies on general processes of the primate auditory system.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
The evolution of speech: a comparative reviewPDF
Trends in cognitive sciences 4(7):258-267, 2000
The evolution of speech can be studied independently of the evolution of language, with the advantage that most aspects of speech acoustics, physiology and neural control are shared with animals, and thus open to empirical investigation. At least two changes were necessary ...MORE ⇓
The evolution of speech can be studied independently of the evolution of language, with the advantage that most aspects of speech acoustics, physiology and neural control are shared with animals, and thus open to empirical investigation. At least two changes were necessary prerequisites for modern human speech abilities: (1) modification of vocal tract morphology, and (2) development of vocal imitative ability. Despite an extensive literature, attempts to pinpoint the timing of these changes using fossil data have proven inconclusive. However, recent comparative data from nonhuman primates have shed light on the ancestral use of formants (a crucial cue in human speech) to identify individuals and gauge body size. Second, comparative analysis of the diverse vertebrates that have evolved vocal imitation (humans, cetaceans, seals and birds) provides several distinct, testable hypotheses about the adaptive function of vocal mimicry. These developments suggest that, for understanding the evolution of speech, comparative analysis of living species provides a viable alternative to fossil data. However, the neural basis for vocal mimicry and for mimesis in general remains unknown.
Journal of Theoretical Biology
Journal of Theoretical Biology 206(3):369-378, 2000
Evolutionary models of communication are used to shed some light on the selective pressures involved in the evolution of simple referential signals, and the constraints hindering the emergence of signs. Error-prone communication results from errors in transmission (in which ...MORE ⇓
Evolutionary models of communication are used to shed some light on the selective pressures involved in the evolution of simple referential signals, and the constraints hindering the emergence of signs. Error-prone communication results from errors in transmission (in which individuals learn the wrong associations) and communication (in which signs are mistaken for one another). We demonstrate how both classes of errors are required to generate diversity and subsequently impose limits on the sign repertoire within a population. We then explore the influence of geographic structuring of a population on the evolution of a shared sign system and the importance of such structure for the maintenance of sign diversity. Deceit tends to erode conventional signs systems thereby reducing signal diversity, we demonstrate that population structure can act as a hedge against deceit, thereby ensuring the persistence of sign systems.
Journal of Theoretical Biology 204(2):179-189, 2000
Language is about words and rules. While there is some discussion to what extent rules are learned or innate, it is clear that words have to be learned. Here I construct a mathematical framework for the population dynamics of language evolution with particular emphasis on how ...MORE ⇓
Language is about words and rules. While there is some discussion to what extent rules are learned or innate, it is clear that words have to be learned. Here I construct a mathematical framework for the population dynamics of language evolution with particular emphasis on how words are propagated over generations. I define the basic reproductive ratio of word, R, and show that R>1 is required for words to be maintained in the lexicon of a language. Assuming that the frequency distribution of words follow Zipf's law, an upper limit is obtained for the number of words in a language that relies exclusively on oral transmission.
Journal of Theoretical Biology 205(1):147-159, 2000
This paper places models of language evolution within the framework of information theory. We study how signals become associated with meaning. If there is a probability of mistaking signals for each other, then evolution leads to an error limit: increasing the number of signals ...MORE ⇓
This paper places models of language evolution within the framework of information theory. We study how signals become associated with meaning. If there is a probability of mistaking signals for each other, then evolution leads to an error limit: increasing the number of signals does not increase the fitness of a language beyond a certain limit. This error limit can be overcome by word formation: a linear increase of the word length leads to an exponential increase of the maximum fitness. We develop a general model of word formation and demonstrate the connection between the error limit and Shannon's noisy coding theorem.
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 355(1403):1615-1622, 2000
Language is the most important evolutionary invention of the last few million years. It was an adaptation that helped our species to exchange information, make plans, express new ideas and totally change the appearance of the planet. How human language evolved from animal ...MORE ⇓
Language is the most important evolutionary invention of the last few million years. It was an adaptation that helped our species to exchange information, make plans, express new ideas and totally change the appearance of the planet. How human language evolved from animal communication is one of the most challenging questions for evolutionary biology. The aim of this paper is to outline the major principles that guided language evolution in terms of mathematical models of evolutionary dynamics and game theory. I will discuss how natural selection can lead to the emergence of arbitrary signs, the formation of words and syntactic communication.
Connection Science
Connection Science 12(2):143-162, 2000
Neural network models of categorical perception (compression of withincategory similarity and dilation of between-category differences) are applied to the symbol-grounding problem (of how to connect symbols with meanings) by connecting analogue sensorimotor projections to ...MORE ⇓
Neural network models of categorical perception (compression of withincategory similarity and dilation of between-category differences) are applied to the symbol-grounding problem (of how to connect symbols with meanings) by connecting analogue sensorimotor projections to arbitrary symbolic representations via learned category-invariance detectors in a hybrid symbolic/non-symbolic system. Our nets are trained to categorize and name 50 2 50 pixel images (e.g. circles, ellipses, squares and rectangles) projected on to the receptive field of a 7 2 7 retina. They first learn to do prototype matching and then entry-level naming for the four kinds of stimuli, grounding their names directly in the input patterns via hidden-unit representations ('sensorimotor toil'). We show that a higher-level categorization (e.g. 'symmetric' versus 'asymmetric') can be learned in two very different ways: either (1) directly from the input, just as with the entry-level categories (i.e. by toil); or (2) indirectly, from Boolean combinations of the grounded category names in the form of propositions describing the higher-order category ('symbolic theft'). We analyse the architectures and input conditions that allow grounding (in the form of compression/ separation in internal similarity space) to be 'transferred' in this second way from directly grounded entry-level category names to higher-order category names. Such hybrid models have implications for the evolution and learning of language.
Adaptive Behavior
Adaptive Behavior 8(1):25-46, 2000
Social coordination is studied in a simulated model of autonomous embodied agents that interact acoustically. Theoretical concepts concerning social behavior are presented from a systemic perspective and their usefulness is evaluated in interpreting the results obtained. Two ...MORE ⇓
Social coordination is studied in a simulated model of autonomous embodied agents that interact acoustically. Theoretical concepts concerning social behavior are presented from a systemic perspective and their usefulness is evaluated in interpreting the results obtained. Two agents moving in an unstructured arena must locate each other, and remain within a short distance of one another for as long as possible using noisy continuous acoustic interaction. Evolved dynamical recurrent neural networks are used as the control architecture. Acoustic coupling poses nontrivial problems like discriminating `self' from `non-self' and structuring production of signals in time so as to minimize interference. Detailed observation of the most frequently evolved behavioral strategy shows that interacting agents perform rhythmic signals leading to the coordination of movement. During coordination, signals become entrained in an anti-phase mode that resembles turn-taking. Perturbation techniques show that signalling behavior not only performs an external function, but it is also integrated into the movement of the producing agent, thus showing the difficulty of separating behavior into social and non- social classes. Structural congruence between agents is shown by exploring internal dynamics as well as the response of single agents in the presence of signalling beacons that reproduce the signal patterns of the interacting agents. Lack of entrainment with the signals produced by the beacons shows the importance of transient periods of mutual dynamic perturbation wherein agents achieve congruence.
Artificial Life
Artificial Life 6(3):237--254, 2000
We analyze a general model of multi-agent communication in which all agents communicate simultaneously to a message board. A genetic algorithm is used to evolve multi-agent languages for the predator agents in a version of the predator-prey pursuit problem. We show that the ...MORE ⇓
We analyze a general model of multi-agent communication in which all agents communicate simultaneously to a message board. A genetic algorithm is used to evolve multi-agent languages for the predator agents in a version of the predator-prey pursuit problem. We show that the resulting behavior of the communicating multi-agent system is equivalent to that of a Mealy finite state machine whose states are determined by the agents' usage of the evolved language. Simulations show that the evolution of a communication language improves the performance of the predators. Increasing the language size (and thus increasing the number of possible states in the Mealy machine) improves the performance even further. Furthermore, the evolved communicating predators perform significantly better than all previous work on similar prey. We introduce a method for incrementally increasing the language size, which results in an effective coarse-to-fine search that significantly reduces the evolution time required to find a solution. We present some observations on the effects of language size, experimental setup, and prey difficulty on the evolved Mealy machines. In particular, we observe that the start state is often revisited, and incrementally increasing the language size results in smaller Mealy machines. Finally, a simple rule is derived that provides a pessimistic estimate on the minimum language size that should be used for any multi-agent problem.
Artificial Life 6(2):129-143, 2000
For many adaptive complex systems information about the environment is not simply recorded in a look-up table, but is rather encoded in a theory, schema, or model, which compresses the information. The grammar of a language can be viewed as such a schema or theory. In a prior ...MORE ⇓
For many adaptive complex systems information about the environment is not simply recorded in a look-up table, but is rather encoded in a theory, schema, or model, which compresses the information. The grammar of a language can be viewed as such a schema or theory. In a prior study [Teal et al., 1999] we proposed several conjectures about the learning and evolution of language that should follow from these observations: (C1) compression aids in generalization; (C2) compression occurs more easily in a smooth, as opposed to a rugged, problem space; and (C3) constraints from compression make it likely that natural languages eveolve toward smooth string spaces. This previous work found general, if not complete support for these three conjectures. Here we build on that study to clarify the relationship between Minimum Description Length (MDL) and error in our model and examine evolution of certain languages in more detail. Our results suggest a fourth conjecture: that all else being equal, (C4) more complex languages change more rapidly during evolution.
Artificial Life 6(2):149-179, 2000
Using communication is not the only cooperative strategy that can evolve when organisms need to solve a problem together. This article describes a model that extends MacLennan and BurghardtOs [37] synthetic ethology simulation to show that using a spatial world in a simulation ...MORE ⇓
Using communication is not the only cooperative strategy that can evolve when organisms need to solve a problem together. This article describes a model that extends MacLennan and BurghardtOs [37] synthetic ethology simulation to show that using a spatial world in a simulation allows a wider range of strategies to evolve in response to environmental demands. The model specifically explores the interaction between population density and resource abundance and their effect on the kinds of cooperative strategies that evolve. Signaling strategies evolve except when population density is high or resource abundance is low.
Language
Grammatical Acquisition: Inductive Bias and Coevolution of Language and the Language Acquisition DevicePDF
Language 76(2):245-296, 2000
An account of grammatical acquisition is developed within the parameter setting framework applied to a generalized categorial grammar (GCG). The GCG is embedded in a default inheritance network yielding a natural partial ordering (reflecting generality) of parameters ...
Journal of Communication Disorders
Journal of Communication Disorders 33(4):273-291, 2000
Our understanding of speech and language disorders may be aided by information about the constraints and predispositions contributed by neural developmental processes. As soon as we begin to look at human neuroanatomy and development from a comparative perspective, it is possible ...MORE ⇓
Our understanding of speech and language disorders may be aided by information about the constraints and predispositions contributed by neural developmental processes. As soon as we begin to look at human neuroanatomy and development from a comparative perspective, it is possible to recognize a number of ways that human brains diverge from the general pattern of other ape and monkey brains. These divergences may offer clues to language evolution. Large-scale quantitative changes in the relative proportions of brain regions (as opposed to just overall expansion) offer some of the most obvious clues. Additional information about how axons are guided in their extensions to distant developmental targets and how competitive trophic processes sculpt these connections also provides a way to understand how gross quantitative changes in cell numbers could affect circuit organization and ultimately behavior.
AI Communications
Emergence of vowel systems through self-organisationPDF
AI Communications 13(1):27-39, 2000
This paper describes a model of the emergence and the universal structural tendencies of vowel systems. Both are considered as the result of self-organisation in a population of language users. The language users try to imitate each other and to learn each other's vowel systems ...MORE ⇓
This paper describes a model of the emergence and the universal structural tendencies of vowel systems. Both are considered as the result of self-organisation in a population of language users. The language users try to imitate each other and to learn each other's vowel systems as well as possible under constraints of production and perception, while at the same time maximising the number of available speech sounds. It is shown through computer simulations that coherent and natural sound systems can indeed emerge in populations of artificial agents. It is also shown that the mechanism that is responsible for the emergence of sound systems can be used for learning existing sound systems as well. Finally, it is argued that the simulation of agents that can only produce isolated vowels is not enough. More complex utterances are needed for other interesting universals of sound systems and for explaining realistic sound change.
Journal of Phonetics
Journal of Phonetics 28(4):441-465, 2000
This paper presents a computer simulation of the emergence of vowel systems in a population of agents. The agents (small computer programs that operate autonomously) are equipped with a realistic articulatory synthesizer, a model of human perception and the ability to imitate and ...MORE ⇓
This paper presents a computer simulation of the emergence of vowel systems in a population of agents. The agents (small computer programs that operate autonomously) are equipped with a realistic articulatory synthesizer, a model of human perception and the ability to imitate and learn sounds they hear. It is shown that due to the interactions between the agents and due to self-organization, realistic vowel repertoires emerge. This happens under a large number of different parameter settings and therefore seems to be a very robust phenomenon. The emerged vowel systems show remarkable similarities with the vowel systems found in human languages. It is argued that self-organization probably plays an important role in determining the vowel inventories of human languages and that innate predispositions are probably not necessary to explain the universal tendencies of human vowel systems.
IEEE Internet Computing
The Emergence of Language Among Autonomous AgentsPDF
IEEE Internet Computing 4(4):90-92, 2000
Abstract Suppose some autonomous shopbot agents had been representing us by dealing with a vendor's pricebot, and suppose they didn't share an agent communication language (ACL). What should they know at a fundamental level, what could each point to, and how ...
Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation
Some strategies for the simulation of vocabulary agreement in multi-agent communitiesPDF
Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation 3(4), 2000
In this paper, we present several experiments of belief propagation in multi-agent communities. Each agent in the simulation has an initial random vocabulary (4 words) corresponding to each possible movement (north, south, east and west). Agents move and communicate the ...MORE ⇓
In this paper, we present several experiments of belief propagation in multi-agent communities. Each agent in the simulation has an initial random vocabulary (4 words) corresponding to each possible movement (north, south, east and west). Agents move and communicate the associated word to the surrounding agents, which can be convinced by the 'speaking agent', and change their corresponding word by 'imitation'. Vocabulary uniformity is achieved, but strong interactions and competition can occur between dominant words. Several moving and trusting strategies as well as agent roles are analyzed.
Journal of Linguistics
Review of three book-length studies of language evolutionPDF
Journal of Linguistics, 2000
If I find that a book I am reading for review is interesting, then I count myself lucky. If it turns out to be insightful, then I am fortunate indeed. The fact that I was given three books to review, each of which is not only interesting and insightful, but downright ENJOYABLE, ...MORE ⇓
If I find that a book I am reading for review is interesting, then I count myself lucky. If it turns out to be insightful, then I am fortunate indeed. The fact that I was given three books to review, each of which is not only interesting and insightful, but downright ENJOYABLE, ...
Natural History
Homo grammaticusPDF
Natural History 109:36-44, 2000
Поиск в библиотеке, Расширенный поиск. ...
Reviews in Anthropology
Standing evolution on its head: The uneasy role of evolutionary theory in comparative cognition and communication
Reviews in Anthropology 29:55-69, 2000
King, Barbara J. The Information Continuum: Evolution of Social Information Transfer in Monkeys, Apes, and Hominids. Santa Fe, NM: SAR Press, 1994. xii+ 166 pp. including references and index. 17.50paper.Parker,SueTaylor,Mitchell,RobertW.,andBoccia,MariaL. ...
Trends in Ecology and Evolution
Trends in Ecology and Evolution 15(5):178-179, 2000
Поиск в библиотеке, Расширенный поиск. ...
Kognitionswissenschaft
Kognitionswissenschaft 8(4):143-150, 2000
Linguistics must again concentrate on the evolutionary nature of language, so that language models are more realistic with respect to human natural languages and have a greater explanatory force. Multi-agent systems are proposed as a possible route to develop such evolutionary ...MORE ⇓
Linguistics must again concentrate on the evolutionary nature of language, so that language models are more realistic with respect to human natural languages and have a greater explanatory force. Multi-agent systems are proposed as a possible route to develop such evolutionary models and an example is given of a concrete experiment in the origins and evolution of word-meaning based on a multi-agent approach.
Journal of Mathematical Biology
Journal of Mathematical Biology 41(2):172-188, 2000
We study an evolutionary language game that describes how signals become associated with meaning. In our context, a language, L, is described by two matrices: the P matrix contains the probabilities that for a speaker certain objects are associated with certain signals, while the ...MORE ⇓
We study an evolutionary language game that describes how signals become associated with meaning. In our context, a language, L, is described by two matrices: the P matrix contains the probabilities that for a speaker certain objects are associated with certain signals, while the Q matrix contains the probabilities that for a listener certain signals are associated with certain objects. We define the payoff in our evolutionary language game as the total amount of information exchanged between two individuals. We give a formal classification of all languages, L(P, Q), describing the conditions for Nash equilibria and evolutionarily stable strategies (ESS). We describe an algorithm for generating all languages that are Nash equilibria. Finally, we show that starting from any random language, there exists an evolutionary trajectory using selection and neutral drift that ends up with a strategy that is a strict Nash equilibrium (or very close to a strict Nash equilibrium).
Language Variation and Change
Internal and external forces in language changePDF
Language Variation and Change 12(3):231-250, 2000
If every productive form of linguistic expression can be described by some idealized human grammar, an individuals's variable linguistic behavior (Weinreich, Labov, & Herzog, 1968) can be modeled as a statistical distribution of multiple idealized grammars. The distribution of ...MORE ⇓
If every productive form of linguistic expression can be described by some idealized human grammar, an individuals's variable linguistic behavior (Weinreich, Labov, & Herzog, 1968) can be modeled as a statistical distribution of multiple idealized grammars. The distribution of grammars is determined by the interaction between the biological constraints on human grammar and the properties of linguistic data in the environment during the course of language acquisition. Such interaction can be formalized precisely and quantitatively in a mathematical model of language learning. Consequently, we model language change as the change in grammar distribution over time, which can be related to the statistical properties of historical linguistic data. As an empirical test, we apply the proposed model to explain the loss of the verb-second phenomenon in Old French and Old English based on corpus studies of historical texts.
2000 :: EDIT BOOK
The Evolutionary Emergence of Language: Social Function and the Origins of Linguistic Form
How protolanguage became language
The Evolutionary Emergence of Language: Social Function and the Origins of Linguistic Form, 2000
Comprehension, production and conventionalization in the origins of language
The Evolutionary Emergence of Language: Social Function and the Origins of Linguistic Form, 2000
The distinction between sentences and noun phrases: An impediment to language evolution?
The Evolutionary Emergence of Language: Social Function and the Origins of Linguistic Form, 2000
Emergence of sound systems through self-organisationPDF
The Evolutionary Emergence of Language: Social Function and the Origins of Linguistic Form, 2000
Language and hominid politicsPDF
The Evolutionary Emergence of Language: Social Function and the Origins of Linguistic Form, 2000
Language is the main distinctive feature of our species. Why do we feel the urge to communicate with our fellows, and why is this form of communication, characterised by relevance, unique in animal kingdom ? In this chapter, we will first stress this specificity of human ...MORE ⇓
Language is the main distinctive feature of our species. Why do we feel the urge to communicate with our fellows, and why is this form of communication, characterised by relevance, unique in animal kingdom ? In this chapter, we will first stress this specificity of human communication. In a second part, using computer evolutionary simulations, we will dismiss the usual claim that human communication is a specific form of reciprocal cooperation. A Darwinian account of language requires that we find a selective advantage in the communication act. We will propose, in the third part of this chapter, that such an advantage can be found if we consider language activity in the broader frame of human social organisation. In the continuation of the 'chimpanzee politics' studied by de Waal (1982), the ability to form large coalitions must have been an essential feature of hominid societies (Dunbar 1996). We will suggest that relevant speech originated in this context, as a way for individuals to select each other to form alliances.
Social transmission favours linguistic generalizationPDF
The Evolutionary Emergence of Language: Social Function and the Origins of Linguistic Form, pages 324-352, 2000
This study1 focuses on the emergence and preservation of linguistic generalisations in a community. Generalisations originate in the innate capacities of individuals for language acquisition and invention. The cycle of language transmission through individual ...
The Emergence of SyntaxPDF
The Evolutionary Emergence of Language: Social Function and the Origins of Linguistic Form, pages 219-230, 2000
The papers in this section re ect a movement, in the late 1990's, away from a focus on the genetic evolution of the innate Language Acquisition Device towards accounts invoking also cultural and linguistic evolution. This is not to deny that the human linguistic capacity ...
Syntax without Natural Selection: How compositionality emerges from vocabulary in a population of learnersPDF
The Evolutionary Emergence of Language: Social Function and the Origins of Linguistic Form, pages 303-323, 2000
How can we explain the origins of our uniquely human compositional system of communication? Much of the recent work tackling this problem (e.g Bickerton 1990; Pinker & Bloom 1990; Newmeyer 1991; Hurford et al. 1998) explicitly attempts to relate models of our innate linguistic ...MORE ⇓
How can we explain the origins of our uniquely human compositional system of communication? Much of the recent work tackling this problem (e.g Bickerton 1990; Pinker & Bloom 1990; Newmeyer 1991; Hurford et al. 1998) explicitly attempts to relate models of our innate linguistic endowment with neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory. These are essentially functional stories, arguing that the central features of human language are genetically encoded and have emerged over evolutionary time in response to natural selection pressures.

In this paper I put forward a new approach to understanding the origins of some of the key ingredients in a syntactic system. I show, using a computational model, that compositional syntax is an inevitable outcome of the dynamics of observationally learned communication systems. In a simulated population of individuals, language develops from a simple idiosyncratic vocabulary with little expressive power, to a compositional system with high expressivity, nouns and verbs, and word order expressing meaning distinctions. This happens without natural selection of learners --- indeed, without any biological change at all --- or any notion of function being built into the system.

This approach does not deny the possibility that much of our linguistic ability may be explained in terms of natural selection, but it does highlight the fact that biological evolution is by no means the only powerful adaptive system at work in the origins of human language.

Introduction -- The evolution of cooperative communicationPDF
The Evolutionary Emergence of Language: Social Function and the Origins of Linguistic Form, 2000
Play as a precursor of phonology and syntax
The Evolutionary Emergence of Language: Social Function and the Origins of Linguistic Form, 2000
The theme of language as play suggests inquiries into non-cognitive uses of language such as that found in riddles, jingles, or tongue twisters—and beyond this into the poetic and ritual function of language, as well as into parallels between language and ritual, language and ...MORE ⇓
The theme of language as play suggests inquiries into non-cognitive uses of language such as that found in riddles, jingles, or tongue twisters—and beyond this into the poetic and ritual function of language, as well as into parallels between language and ritual, language and ...
The spandrels of the linguistic genotype
The Evolutionary Emergence of Language: Social Function and the Origins of Linguistic Form, 2000
Under one view, a grammar is a mental entity, represented in the mind/brain of an individual and characterising that individual's linguistic capacity.'It emerges on exposure to some linguistic environment, which triggers the development of a grammar from some structured ...
Modelling language-physiology coevolutionPDF
The Evolutionary Emergence of Language: Social Function and the Origins of Linguistic Form, 2000
A feature of current computational models of language evolution is that the individuals in later populations are not structurally,'physiologically', different from those in the first. Evolution may be working on the language itself, as learned by agents which do not ...
Evolution of speech: The relation between ontogeny and phylogeny
The Evolutionary Emergence of Language: Social Function and the Origins of Linguistic Form, 2000
In this chapter, we present the hypothesis that the production of speech had a simple evolutionary origin, and then increased in complexity in particular ways, and that this sequence of events was similar to the one which is observed in speech acquisition. The ...
On the reconstruction of 'Proto-world' word order
The Evolutionary Emergence of Language: Social Function and the Origins of Linguistic Form, 2000
It is a truism that hypotheses about the evolution of cognitive faculties are problematic in ways that those about purely physical features are not. The language faculty, as an evolutionary emergent trait, multiplies such problems by an order of magnitude. As a result ...
Co-operation, competition and the evolution of pre-linguistic communicationPDF
The Evolutionary Emergence of Language: Social Function and the Origins of Linguistic Form, 2000
The history, rate and pattern of world linguistic evolution
The Evolutionary Emergence of Language: Social Function and the Origins of Linguistic Form, 2000
Seven thousand or more different languages may currently be spoken around the world (Grimes 1988; Ruhlen 1991). This is more different languages spoken by a single mammalian species than there are mammalian species. Seven thousand different ...
Secret language use at female initiation: Bounding gossiping communities
The Evolutionary Emergence of Language: Social Function and the Origins of Linguistic Form, 2000
The idea that'gossip'or vocal exchange of social information was a vital mechanism for bonding early human groups appears plausible and concretely testable (Dunbar 1996, 1998; Dunbar, Duncan and Nettle 1995). The relatively rapid encephalisation seen in ...
Evolutionary implications of the particulate principle: Imitation and the dissociation of phonetic form from semantic function
The Evolutionary Emergence of Language: Social Function and the Origins of Linguistic Form, 2000
Introduction -- The emergence of phonetic structure
The Evolutionary Emergence of Language: Social Function and the Origins of Linguistic Form, 2000
The role of mimesis in infant language development: Evidence for phylogeny?
The Evolutionary Emergence of Language: Social Function and the Origins of Linguistic Form, 2000
Donald (1991, 1993, 1998) has proposed an imaginative evolutionary scenario involving a preverbal'mimetic'stage of symbolic culture. Although nonverbal symbolic expression continues to play an important role in human mental life today (in art, athletics, crafts, ...
Words, memes and language evolution
The Evolutionary Emergence of Language: Social Function and the Origins of Linguistic Form, 2000
Holistic utterances in protolanguage: The link from primates to humans
The Evolutionary Emergence of Language: Social Function and the Origins of Linguistic Form, 2000
Diachronic Syntax: Models and Mechanisms
Evolutionary Perspectives on Diachronic SyntaxPDF
Diachronic Syntax: Models and Mechanisms, 2000
The main purpose of this article is to argue the merits of 'population thinking'in gaining insight into linguistic and, in particular, syntactic change. Population-level thinking and modelling can shed new light on many issues in the study of language acquisition and ...
Hybrid Neural Symbolic Integration
Hybrid Neural Symbolic Integration, 2000
This paper proposes an account of the acquisition of grammatical relations using the basic concepts of connectionism and a construction-based theory of grammar. Many previous accounts of first-language acquisition assume that grammatical relations (eg, the ...
Architectures of the Mind, Architectures of the Brain
Mirror Neurons and the Action Theory of Language OriginsPDF
Architectures of the Mind, Architectures of the Brain, 2000
The research reported here attempts to understand how language may have originated from sensori-motor competences. Recently the observation of mirror neurons [1] has lead to the suggestion that there is not only a rich representation of motor action but also that this ...
2000 :: BOOK
The Seeds of Speech: Language Origin and Evolution
Cambridge Univ Press, 2000
Human language is a weird communication system: it has more in common with birdsong than with the calls of other primates. Jean Aitchison explores the origins of human language and how it has evolved. She likens the search to a vast prehistoric jigsaw puzzle, in which ...
Artificial Life: A Constructive Approach to the Origin/Evolution of Life, Society, and Language
, 2000
How Children Learn the Meanings of Words
MIT Press, 2000
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1 First Words
2 Fast Mapping and the Course of Word Learning
3 Word Learning and Theory of Mind
4 Object Names and Other Common Nouns
5 Pronouns and Proper Names
6 Concepts and Categories
7 Naming Representations
8 ...MORE ⇓
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1 First Words
2 Fast Mapping and the Course of Word Learning
3 Word Learning and Theory of Mind
4 Object Names and Other Common Nouns
5 Pronouns and Proper Names
6 Concepts and Categories
7 Naming Representations
8 Learning Words through Linguistic Context
9 Number Words
10 Words and Concepts
11 Final Words
Lingua ex Machina
MIT Press, 2000
Explaining Language Change: An Evolutionary Approach
London: Longman, 2000
The Evolutionary Emergence of Language: Social Function and the Origins of Linguistic Form
Cambridge University Press, 2000
The Evolutionary Emergence of Language covers the origins and early evolution of language. Its main purpose is to synthesize current thinking on this topic, particularly from a standpoint in theoretical linguistics. It is suitable for students of human evolution, ...
Human language and our reptilian brain: The subcortical bases of speech, syntax, and thought
Harvard University Press, 2000
This book is an entry into the fierce current debate among psycholinguists, neuroscientists, and evolutionary theorists about the nature and origins of human language. A prominent neuroscientist here takes up the Darwinian case, using data seldom considered by ...
Economics and LanguagePDF
Cambridge University Press, 2000
TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART 1 ECONOMICS OF LANGUAGE
 0 Economics and language 3
 1 Choosing the semantic properties of language 9
 2 Evolution gives meaning to language 25
 3 Strategic considerations in pragmatics 37

PART 2 LANGUAGE OF ...MORE ⇓

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART 1 ECONOMICS OF LANGUAGE
 0 Economics and language 3
 1 Choosing the semantic properties of language 9
 2 Evolution gives meaning to language 25
 3 Strategic considerations in pragmatics 37

PART 2 LANGUAGE OF ECONOMICS
 4 Decision making and language 55
 5 On the rhetoric of game theory 71

Concluding remarks 89

PART 3 COMMENTS
 0 Johan van Benthem 93
 0 Tilman Bors 108
 0 Barton Lipman 114

2000 :: PHD THESIS
Microevolutionary Language Theory
School of Architecture and Planning, MIT, 2000
A new microevolutionary theory of complex design within language is pro- posed. Experiments were carried out that support the theory that complex functional design --- adaptive complexity --- accumulates due to the evolu- tionary algorithm at the simplest levels within human ...MORE ⇓
A new microevolutionary theory of complex design within language is pro- posed. Experiments were carried out that support the theory that complex functional design --- adaptive complexity --- accumulates due to the evolu- tionary algorithm at the simplest levels within human natural language. A large software system was developed which identifies and tracks evolution- ary dynamics within text discourse. With this system hundreds of examples of activity suggesting evolutionary significance were distilled from a text collection of many millions of words.

Research contributions include: (1) An active replicator model of micro- evolutionary dynamics within natural language, (2) methods to distill active replicators offering evidence of evolutionary processes in action and at multiple linguistic levels (lexical, lexical co-occurrence, lexico-syntac- tic, and syntactic), (3) a demonstration that language evolution and organic evolution are both examples of a single over-arching evolutionary algo- rithm, (4) a set of tools to comparatively study language over time, and (5) methods to materially improve text retrieval.

Autonomous Formation of Concepts and CommunicationPDF
Vrije Universiteit Brussel, 2000
The research in this thesis addresses the question of how autonomous agents may develop concepts about their environment and develop a system of communication that allows them to exchange information about this environment based on those concepts. An autonomous agent is a system, ...MORE ⇓
The research in this thesis addresses the question of how autonomous agents may develop concepts about their environment and develop a system of communication that allows them to exchange information about this environment based on those concepts. An autonomous agent is a system, in software or in hardware, that receives sensor input from the environment, selects actions, and may receive evaluative feedback reflecting the appropriateness of its actions. Communication is viewed as the transfer of information, in the sense that when a sender sends a message to a receiver, the amount of uncertainty in the receiver's knowledge about its environment decreases as a result of receiving the message. When agents have incomplete knowledge about their environment, communication can be valuable as a means to reduce this uncertainty by sharing information, and can be used to coordinate the actions of agents. Communication is learned during the life time of the agents, and the research concerns the question of how agents may cooperate to arrive at a shared system of communication.

Features of the information available to an agent through its sensors can be used to construct concepts, also called meanings. Constructing concepts based on the requirements posed by the environment is a more flexible approach than fixing the concepts of agents at design time, and may be necessary when the agents are to function in unknown or changing environments.

In this thesis, a particular type of concepts is described, called situation concepts. Situation concepts consist of features in the history of interaction between the agent and its environment, which consists of sensor data, actions, and subsequent evaluative feedback. A defining criterion of a situation concept is that it predicts some aspect of the future evolution of the state of the environment, possibly conditioned on the actions the agent may take. Several existing methods, particularly from the field of reinforcement learning, can be viewed as constructing a form of situation concepts. A particular method for constructing a specific type of situation concepts, called the adaptive subspace method, is described. The method uses the current sensor values of an agent as features and develops concepts that specify an interval for each sensor. These concepts predict the value of actions the agent can take when its current sensor values are within the specified intervals. The meanings thus formed represent situations, and are especially appropriate for use in communication, since they convey information about the environment.

The development of communication is viewed as the formation of associations between words and the meanings formed by the agents in a population, in such a way that agents tend to use the same word in the same situation. When agents autonomously construct concepts, a consequence is that they may not possess identical concepts. Additional constraints that are respected, such as the commitment that agents have no direct access to the meanings formed by other agents (they can not 'look inside each other's head'), and that no single agent may decide on the system of communication, further complicate the problem of how such a system of associations may come about.

Rather than viewing communication as fixed, it is viewed as a dynamical system. A dynamical system is a mathematical model of a system that changes over time. The variables of this system are the strengths of the associations between words and the meanings of the agents in a population. An algorithm is described in detail that, when used by each individual agent to adapt its associations between words and the situation concepts it has formed, leads to a shared system of communication.

The necessity of different components of the algorithm is shown with statistical significance. Associations are linear combinations of use (the frequency with which a word is observed in a situation) and success (the degree to which the word correctly indicates that its associated situation is the current situation in the environment). Analysis of the success component of the algorithm showed that not the success information itself, but the lateral inhibition between competing associations is crucial for the development of communication. It is experimentally demonstrated how the development of communication can compensate for differences in conceptual systems.

Systematic measures have been introduced to determine the quality of conceptual systems and communication systems. The measures require knowledge of the ideal concepts, called referents; although such knowledge is not available in general, simulation experiments often do provide the opportunity for such referents to be determined.

The specificity measure for communication is based on the principle that knowledge of a word should yield information (i.e. reduce uncertainty) about the referent (the current situation in the environment), and vice versa for the consistency measure. In cases of maximal specificity, the information a word yields is complete, and thus identifies the situation, whereas in the worst case, the word does not yield any information at all. The measure quantifies these and all intermediate cases. The consistency measure is computed as the extent to which a referent identifies a word, and thus expresses whether for each a referent the agent consistently uses the same word. If both specificity and consistency are high, each agent consistently uses a unique word for each referent. A population measure called coherence is used to determine whether different agents use the same words. In combination with the specificity and consistency measures, the experimenter can determine to what degree a perfect system of communication, consistently linking each referent to a unique word, is approximated.

Interestingly, the same principle can be used to evaluate the quality of a conceptual system. Ideally, each concept an agent has formed identifies a single referent in the environment; this is expressed by the distinctiveness measure, calculated as the degree to which the meanings an agent possesses distinguish between the different referents. Conversely, parsimony expresses the degree to which a referent identifies a meaning. It thus reflects whether the agent has not generated more meanings than necessary. Together, high distinctiveness and high parsimony imply that a conceptual system is ideal in the sense that it approximates a one-to-one relation between meanings and referents.

A contribution is made to the viewpoint of communication as a dynamical system by considering the attractors in the communication system that has been described. A deterministic version of the system is proved mathematically and demonstrated experimentally to have point attractors that correspond to perfect communication. An operational definition of pseudo-attractors is used to demonstrate that the stochastic system has points that play a similar role. Stochasticity is found to be a useful ingredient in the development of communication, in that it avoids deadlocks and results in communication more consistently and under a wider variety of parameter settings. This finding is confirmed by a systematic investigation of the effect of different amounts of stochasticity, regulated by the temperature parameter that governs word production. The analysis provides evidence that a dynamical systems perspective on the development of communication is valuable.

Lexicon Grounding on Mobile RobotsPDF
Vrije Universiteit Brussel, 2000
The thesis presents research that investigates how two mobile robots can develop a shared lexicon from scratch of which the meaning is grounded in the real world. It is shown how the robots can solve the symbol grounding problem in a particular experimental setup. The model by ...MORE ⇓
The thesis presents research that investigates how two mobile robots can develop a shared lexicon from scratch of which the meaning is grounded in the real world. It is shown how the robots can solve the symbol grounding problem in a particular experimental setup. The model by which the robots do so is explained in detail. The experimental results are presented and discussed.