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Meaning Space Structure Determines the Stability of Culturally Evolved
Compositional Language
Henry Brighton (henryb@ling.ed.ac.uk)
Language Evolution and Computation Research Unit,
Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics,
The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
Simon Kirby (simon@ling.ed.ac.uk)
Language Evolution and Computation Research Unit,
Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics,
The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

Abstract Explanations for the evolution of compositional and re­ cursive syntax have previously attributed these phenom­ ena to the genetic evolution of the language acquisition device. Recent work in the field of computational evolu­ tionary linguistics suggests that syntactic structure can in­ stead be explained in terms of the dynamics arising from the cultural evolution of language. We build on this pre­ vious work by presenting a model of language acquisi­ tion based on the Minimum Description Length princi­ ple. Our Monte Carlo simulations show that the relative cultural stability of compositional language versus non­ compositional language is greatest under conditions spe­ cific to hominids: a complex meaning space structure.
Introduction and Related Work Human language differs greatly from other natural com­ munication systems. Our use of compositional and re­ cursive syntax places us in a unique position: we can comprehend and produce an ostensibly infinite number of utterances. Why are we alone in this position? Human language is a result of three adaptive systems: learning, genetic evolution, and cultural evolution. Over the past half century cognitive scientists has addressed the prob­ lem of learning. The past ten years has seen a resurgence of interest in the evolutionary basis of language (Pinker & Bloom, 1990). Only recently has the cultural evolu­ tion of language been seriously analysed. Hare & Elman (1994) outlined perhaps the first iterated learning model. The iterated learning model seeks to model ...

@techreport{brighton01meaningSpace,
  author={H. Brighton and S. Kirby},
  title={Meaning Space Structure Determines the Stability of Culturally Evolved Compositional Language},
  year={2001},
  institution={Language Evolution and Computation Research Unit, Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, The University of Edinburgh},
  url={http://www.isrl.uiuc.edu/~amag/langev/paper/brighton01meaningSpace.html},
  keywords={cultural evolution, machine learning, language evolution, dynamical systems}
}

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