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The emergence of human communication systems is typically investigated via 2 approaches with complementary strengths and weaknesses: naturalistic studies and computer simulations. This study was conducted with a method that combines these approaches. Pairs of participants played video games requiring communication. Members of a pair were physically separated but exchanged graphic signals through a medium that prevented the use of standard symbols (e.g., letters). Communication systems emerged and developed rapidly during the games, integrating the use of explicit signs with information implicitly available to players and silent behavior-coordinating procedures. The systems that emerged suggest 3 conclusions: (a) signs originate from different mappings; (b) sign systems develop parsimoniously; (c) sign forms are perceptually distinct, easy to produce, and tolerant to variations.

This paper presents a new computational model for studying the origins and evolution of compositional languages grounded through the interaction between agents and their environment. The model is based on previous work on adaptive grounding of lexicons and the iterated learning model. Although the model is still in a developmental phase, the first results show that a compositional language can emerge in which the structure reflects regularities present in the population’s environment. 1

Abstract. How and where are the universal features of language specified? We consider language users as situated agents acting as conduits for the cultural transmission of language. Using multi-agent computational models we show that certain hallmarks of language are adaptive in the context of cultural transmission. This observation requires us to reconsider the role of innateness in explaining the characteristic structure of language. The relationship between innate bias and the universal features of language becomes opaque when we consider that significant linguistic evolution can occur as a result of cultural transmission. 1

There is a growing body of research on multi-agent systems bootstrapping a communication system. Most studies are based on simulation, but recently there has been an increased interest in the properties and formal analysis of these systems. Although

Abstract — Colour naming games are idealised communicative interactions within a population of artificial agents in which a speaker uses a single colour term to draw the attention of a hearer to a particular object in a shared context. Through a series of such games, a colour lexicon can be developed that is sufficiently shared to allow for successful communication, even when the agents start out without any predefined categories. In previous models of colour naming games, the shared context was typically artificially generated from a set of colour stimuli and both agents in the interaction perceive this environment in an identical way. In this paper, we investigate the dynamics of the colour naming game in a robotic setup in which humanoid robots perceive a set of colourful objects from their own perspective. We compare the resulting colour ontologies to those found in human languages and show how these ontologies reflect

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There has been a vigourous debate in the evolution of language literature on whether the human capacity for language evolved gradually or with an abrupt “big bang”. One of the arguments in favor of the latter position has been that human language is an all or nothing phenomenon that is of no value when only part of its apparatus is in place. From a developmental perspective this has always been a peculiar argument, seemingly at odds with the gradual development of phonological, syntactic and semantic skills of infants. In the context of the evolution of language, the argument was eloquently refuted in a seminal paper by Pinker & Bloom (1990). However, Pinker & Bloom did not go much further than stating that a gradual evolution of Universal Grammar was possible. They did not explore the consequences of such a view for linguistic theory, and their approach was critized by both orthodox generativists and their long-term opponents. Jackendoff (2002) has now gone one step further. If linguistic theory is incompatible with gradual evolution and development, perhaps linguistic theory needs to be revised. Jackendoff has written a powerful book around the thesis that the language capacity is a collection of skills (“a toolbox”). Some of these skills are language-specific, some not, and each of them is functional even without all

Research in language evolution is concerned with the question of how complex linguistic structures can emerge from the interactions between many communicating individuals. As such it complements psycholinguistics which investigates the processes involved in individual adult language processing, and child language development studies, investigating how children learn a given (fixed) language. We focus on the framework of language games and argue that they offer a fresh and formal perspective on many current debates in cognitive science, including those on the synchronic vs. diachronic perspective on language, the embodiment and situatedness of language and cognition, and the self-organization of linguistic patterns. We present a measure for the quality of a lexicon in a population, and derive four characteristics of the “optimal lexicon”: specificity, coherence, distinctiveness and regularity. We present a model of lexical dynamics that shows the spontaneous emergence of these characteristics in a distributed population of individuals that incorporate embodiment constraints. Finally, we discuss how research in cognitive science could contribute to improving existing language game models.

Abstract We show how cultural selection for learnability during the process of linguistic evolution can be visualized using a simple iterated learning model. Computational models of linguistic evolution typically focus on the nature of, and conditions for, stable states. We take a novel approach and focus on understanding the process of linguistic evolution itself. What kind of evolutionary system is this process? Using visualization techniques, we explore the nature of replicators in linguistic evolution, and argue that replicators correspond to local regions of regularity in the mapping between meaning and signals. Based on this argument, we draw parallels between phenomena observed in the model and linguistic phenomena observed across languages. We then go on to identify issues of replication and selection as key points of divergence in the parallels between the processes of linguistic evolution and biological evolution.