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The Cultural Evolution of Structured Languages in an Open‐Ended, Continuous World
Language maps signals onto meanings through the use of two distinct types of structure. First, the space of meanings is discretized into categories that are shared by all users of the language. Second, the signals employed by the language are compositional: The meaning of the whole is a function of...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
John Wiley and Sons Inc.
2016
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5484388/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27061857 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/cogs.12371 |
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author | Carr, Jon W. Smith, Kenny Cornish, Hannah Kirby, Simon |
author_facet | Carr, Jon W. Smith, Kenny Cornish, Hannah Kirby, Simon |
author_sort | Carr, Jon W. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Language maps signals onto meanings through the use of two distinct types of structure. First, the space of meanings is discretized into categories that are shared by all users of the language. Second, the signals employed by the language are compositional: The meaning of the whole is a function of its parts and the way in which those parts are combined. In three iterated learning experiments using a vast, continuous, open‐ended meaning space, we explore the conditions under which both structured categories and structured signals emerge ex nihilo. While previous experiments have been limited to either categorical structure in meanings or compositional structure in signals, these experiments demonstrate that when the meaning space lacks clear preexisting boundaries, more subtle morphological structure that lacks straightforward compositionality—as found in natural languages—may evolve as a solution to joint pressures from learning and communication. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-5484388 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2016 |
publisher | John Wiley and Sons Inc. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-54843882017-07-10 The Cultural Evolution of Structured Languages in an Open‐Ended, Continuous World Carr, Jon W. Smith, Kenny Cornish, Hannah Kirby, Simon Cogn Sci Regular Articles Language maps signals onto meanings through the use of two distinct types of structure. First, the space of meanings is discretized into categories that are shared by all users of the language. Second, the signals employed by the language are compositional: The meaning of the whole is a function of its parts and the way in which those parts are combined. In three iterated learning experiments using a vast, continuous, open‐ended meaning space, we explore the conditions under which both structured categories and structured signals emerge ex nihilo. While previous experiments have been limited to either categorical structure in meanings or compositional structure in signals, these experiments demonstrate that when the meaning space lacks clear preexisting boundaries, more subtle morphological structure that lacks straightforward compositionality—as found in natural languages—may evolve as a solution to joint pressures from learning and communication. John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2016-04-07 2017-05 /pmc/articles/PMC5484388/ /pubmed/27061857 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/cogs.12371 Text en Copyright © 2016 The Authors. Cognitive Science published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of Cognitive Science Society. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
spellingShingle | Regular Articles Carr, Jon W. Smith, Kenny Cornish, Hannah Kirby, Simon The Cultural Evolution of Structured Languages in an Open‐Ended, Continuous World |
title | The Cultural Evolution of Structured Languages in an Open‐Ended, Continuous World |
title_full | The Cultural Evolution of Structured Languages in an Open‐Ended, Continuous World |
title_fullStr | The Cultural Evolution of Structured Languages in an Open‐Ended, Continuous World |
title_full_unstemmed | The Cultural Evolution of Structured Languages in an Open‐Ended, Continuous World |
title_short | The Cultural Evolution of Structured Languages in an Open‐Ended, Continuous World |
title_sort | cultural evolution of structured languages in an open‐ended, continuous world |
topic | Regular Articles |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5484388/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27061857 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/cogs.12371 |
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