Language evolution is shaped by the structure of the world: an iterated learning analysis

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dc.contributor.authorPerfors, A.
dc.contributor.authorNavarro, D.
dc.contributor.conferenceAnnual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci) (20 Jul 2011 - 23 Jul 2011 : Boston, Massachusetts)
dc.date.issued2011
dc.description.abstractHuman languages vary in many ways, but also show striking cross-linguistic universals. Why do these universals exist? Recent theoretical results demonstrate that Bayesian learners transmitting language to each other through iterated learning will converge on a distribution of languages that depends only on their prior biases about language and the quantity of data transmitted at each point; the structure of the world being communicated about plays no role (Griffiths & Kalish, 2005, 2007). We revisit these findings and show that when certain assumptions about the independence of languages and the world are abandoned, learners will converge to languages that depend on the structure of the world as well as their prior biases. These theoretical results are supported with a series of experiments showing that when human learners acquire language through iterated learning, the ultimate structure of those languages is shaped by the structure of the meanings to be communicated.
dc.description.statementofresponsibilityAmy Perfors, Daniel Navarro
dc.identifier.citationExpanding the Space of Cognitive Science, Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 2011, pp.477-482
dc.identifier.isbn9780976831877
dc.identifier.orcidNavarro, D. [0000-0001-7648-6578]
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/2440/88149
dc.language.isoen
dc.publisherCognitive Science Society
dc.publisher.placeAustin, TX, USA
dc.relation.granthttp://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/DP0773794
dc.relation.isreplacedby2440/90825
dc.relation.isreplacedbyhttp://hdl.handle.net/2440/90825
dc.rights© Authors
dc.source.urihttp://mindmodeling.org/cogsci2011/papers/0089/index.html
dc.subjectlanguage evolution; iterated learning; Bayesian modeling; linguistic structure
dc.titleLanguage evolution is shaped by the structure of the world: an iterated learning analysis
dc.typeConference paper
pubs.publication-statusPublished

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