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The morphospace of language networks

What is the nature of language? How has it evolved in different species? Are there qualitative, well-defined classes of languages? Most studies of language evolution deal in a way or another with such theoretical contraption and explore the outcome of diverse forms of selection on the communication...

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Autores principales: Seoane, Luís F., Solé, Ricard
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6041342/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29993008
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-28820-0
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author Seoane, Luís F.
Solé, Ricard
author_facet Seoane, Luís F.
Solé, Ricard
author_sort Seoane, Luís F.
collection PubMed
description What is the nature of language? How has it evolved in different species? Are there qualitative, well-defined classes of languages? Most studies of language evolution deal in a way or another with such theoretical contraption and explore the outcome of diverse forms of selection on the communication matrix that somewhat optimizes communication. This framework naturally introduces networks mediating the communicating agents, but no systematic analysis of the underlying landscape of possible language graphs has been developed. Here we present a detailed analysis of network properties on a generic model of a communication code, which reveals a rather complex and heterogeneous morphospace of language graphs. Additionally, we use curated data of English words to locate and evaluate real languages within this morphospace. Our findings indicate a surprisingly simple structure in human language unless particles with the ability of naming any other concept are introduced in the vocabulary. These results refine and for the first time complement with empirical data a lasting theoretical tradition around the framework of least effort language.
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spelling pubmed-60413422018-07-13 The morphospace of language networks Seoane, Luís F. Solé, Ricard Sci Rep Article What is the nature of language? How has it evolved in different species? Are there qualitative, well-defined classes of languages? Most studies of language evolution deal in a way or another with such theoretical contraption and explore the outcome of diverse forms of selection on the communication matrix that somewhat optimizes communication. This framework naturally introduces networks mediating the communicating agents, but no systematic analysis of the underlying landscape of possible language graphs has been developed. Here we present a detailed analysis of network properties on a generic model of a communication code, which reveals a rather complex and heterogeneous morphospace of language graphs. Additionally, we use curated data of English words to locate and evaluate real languages within this morphospace. Our findings indicate a surprisingly simple structure in human language unless particles with the ability of naming any other concept are introduced in the vocabulary. These results refine and for the first time complement with empirical data a lasting theoretical tradition around the framework of least effort language. Nature Publishing Group UK 2018-07-11 /pmc/articles/PMC6041342/ /pubmed/29993008 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-28820-0 Text en © The Author(s) 2018 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Seoane, Luís F.
Solé, Ricard
The morphospace of language networks
title The morphospace of language networks
title_full The morphospace of language networks
title_fullStr The morphospace of language networks
title_full_unstemmed The morphospace of language networks
title_short The morphospace of language networks
title_sort morphospace of language networks
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6041342/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29993008
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-28820-0
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