Language Evolution Can Be Shaped by the Structure of the World. (24th January 2014)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Perfors, Amy; Navarro, Daniel J.
• Is Part Of: Cognitive science. Volume 38:Number 4(2014:May)
• Page Start: 775
• Page End: 793
• Publication Date: 2014-01-24
• Subjects: Cognition -- Periodicals; Psycholinguistics -- Periodicals; Artificial intelligence -- Periodicals; 153.05
• DOI: 10.1111/cogs.12102
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0364-0213

Abstract

<abstract abstract-type="main" id="cogs12102-abs-0001"> <title>Abstract</title> <p>Human 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 &amp; Kalish, <xref ref-type="link" rid="cogs12102-bib-0011">2005</xref>, <xref ref-type="link" rid="cogs12102-bib-0012">2007</xref>). We revisit these findings and show that when certain assumptions about the relationship between language 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.</p> </abstract>