The paper surveys work on the computational modeling of the origins and evolution of language. The main approaches are clarified and some example experiments from the domains of the evolution of communication, phonetics, lexicon formation, and syntax are discussed. 1 Introduction The paper surveys research in which software simulations and experiments with robotic agents are used to explore the viewpoint that language is a complex dynamical system. The main goal of the paper is to outline the approaches and show example experiments. Much more work needs to be done to arrive at a full-fledged theory of the origins of language and even about the work already done much more can be said than is possible in a single paper. Nevertheless, I hope to show that a new exciting approach to the study of the origins and evolution of language is taking shape. The rest of the paper is in four parts. The next section clarifies the notion of a complex system and the multi-agent perspective. Section 3...

XIII SAMENVATTING XV ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS XVII 1. INTRODUCTION 1 1.1 The Aims 1 1.2 The Contributions 3 1.3 The Background 4 1.4 The Model 4 1.5 The Results 5 1.6 How to Read the Thesis 6 2. THE THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 9 2.1 Universal Tendencies of Human Sound Systems 9 2.1.1 Regularities of systems of speech sounds. 10 2.1.2 Regularities of speech sound sequences. 11 2.1.3 Explanations of regularities based on features. 11 2.1.4 Stevens' quantal theory of speech. 12 2.1.5 Carr' s distinctive region model. 12 2.1.6 Predicting sound systems as a whole. 13 2.1.7 How sound systems have become optimised. 14 2.1.8 Glotin' s AGORA model. 15 2.1.9 Berrah' s ESPECE model. 15 2.2 Steels' Work 16 2.2.1 Language as an open, complex dynamic system. 17 2.2.2 Language as an adaptive system. 18 2.2.3 Mechanisms of language origins. 18 2.2.4 Arguments against innateness of language. 20 2.3 The Use of Computer Simulations 21 iv 2.4 The Research Questions 22 3. THE SIMULATION 23 3.1 The History of the Simul...

The paper reports experiments to test the hypothesis that language is an autonomous evolving adaptive system maintained by a group of distributed agents without central control. The experiments show how a coherent lexicon may spontaneously emerge in a group of agents engaged in language games and how a lexicon may adapt to cope with new meanings that arise or new agents that enter the group. The lexicon has several characteristics of natural language lexicons, such as polysemy, synonymy and ambiguity. Keywords: origins of language, lexicon acquisition, self-organization. 1 Introduction The origins and evolution of language is still clouded in mystery, despite an extensive literature within linguistics, psychology, anthropology and neurobiology (see a recent overview in [15]). The most common hypothesis being explored in American linguistics is that language is based on a species-specific innate ability (a kind of language organ) and on the refinement of innate knowledge (universal gr...

The evolution of language implies the parallel evolution of an ability to respond appropriately to signals (language understanding) and an ability to produce the appropriate signals in the appropriate circumstances (language production). When linguistic signals are produced to inform other individuals, individuals that respond appropriately to these signals may increase their reproductive chances but it is less clear what is the reproductive advantage for the languages producers. We present simulations in which populations of neural networks living in an environment evolve a simple language with an informative function. Signals are produced to help other individuals to categorize edible and poisonous mushrooms in order to decide whether to approach or avoid encountered mushrooms. Language production, while not under direct evolutionary pressure, evolves as a by-product of the independently evolving perceptual ability to categorize mushrooms. Keywords: Language evolution, Ge...

The paper proposes a mechanism for the spontaneous formation of perceptually grounded meanings under the selectionist pressure of a discrimination task. The mechanism is defined formally and the results of some simulation experiments are reported. Keywords: origins of meanings, self-organization, distributed agents, open systems. 1 Introduction The research reported here is part of a larger research program to understand the origins of language and meaning using complex systems mechanisms such as self-organisation, co-evolution, and level formation [5]. This paper focuses on the meaning creation process. A theoretical model is proposed to explain how an autonomous agent may originate new meanings. The agent is autonomous in the sense that its ontology is not explicitly put in by a designer, nor is there any explicit instruction. For the purpose of this paper, meaning is defined as a conceptualisation or categorisation of reality which is relevant from the viewpoint of the agent. Me...

An account of grammatical acquisition is developed within the parametersetting framework applied to a generalized categorial grammar (GCG). The GCG is embedded in a default inheritance network yielding a natural partial ordering (reflecting generality) of parameters which determines a partial order for parameter setting. Computational simulation shows that several resulting acquisition procedures are effective on a parameter set expressing major typological distinctions based on constituent order, and defining 70 distinct full languages and over 200 subset languages. The effects on acquisition of inductive bias, that is, of differing initial parameter settings, are explored via computational simulation. Computational simulation of populations of language learners and users instantiating the acquisition model show: 1) that variant acquisition procedures, with differing inductive biases, exert differing selective pressures on the evolution of language(s); 2) acquisition proc...

This paper presents an approach to solve the symbol grounding problem within the framework of embodied cognitive science. It will be argued that symbolic structures can be used within the paradigm of embodied cognitive science by adopting an alternative definition of a symbol. In this alternative definition, the symbol may be viewed as a structural coupling between an agent's sensorimotor activations and its environment. A robotic experiment is presented in which mobile robots develop a symbolic structure from scratch by engaging in a series of language games. In this experiment it is shown that robots can develop a symbolic structure with which they can communicate the names of a few objects with a remarkable degree of success. It is further shown that, although the referents may be interpreted differently on different occasions, the objects are usually named with only one form.

: This paper describes experiments in cooperation using autonomous mobile robots to perform a cleaning task. The robots have heterogeneous capabilities and the task is designed so that cooperation is required. Each experiment increases the sophistication of the cooperation scheme to assess the effect on task performance. The experiments range from using emergent cooperation with no communication to explicit cooperation and communication. We also propose an action selection mechanism that can also be used for distributed planning of joint actions inspired by the way primates co-construct joint plans. Keywords: Cooperation, Vision, Touch, Mobile 1. INTRODUCTION The research effort into multi-robot systems is driven by the assumption that multiple agents have the possibility to solve problems more efficiently than a single agent. Agents must therefore cooperate in some way. Before we can begin to consider cooperation between robots we must define exactly what is meant by cooperation. Nex...

: In the sound systems of human languages remarkable universals are found. These universals can be explained by innate mechanisms, or by their function in human speech. This paper presents a functional explanation of certain universals of vowel systems using Alife-techniques. It is based on language-like interactions between members of a population of individual agents. The agents start out empty, but have a "drive" to make (vowel) sounds to each other and to imitate these sounds. Through repeated "imitation games" and through modifications of their own sound system, based on the outcome of the imitation games, the agents reach coherence. The sound systems that arise have properties that are similar to those of human vowel systems. Keywords: language origins, cultural evolution, phonological universals 1. Introduction Alife techniques have been used to aid many fields of science, such as biology, ethology and psychology. In this paper alife techniques are applied to...

Human language acquisition, and in particular the acquisition of grammar, is a partially-canalized, strongly-biased but robust and e cient procedure. For example, children prefer to induce lexically compositional rules (e.g. Wanner and Gleitman, 1982) despite the use, in every attested human language, of constructions, such as morphological negation or non-compositional idioms. And, most parameters of grammatical variation set during language acquisition appear to have default or so-called unmarked values retained in the absence of robust counter-evidence (e.g. Bickerton, 1984 � Hyams, 1986 � Lightfoot, 1992). A variety of explanations have been o ered for the emergence of a partially-innate language acquisition device (LAD) with such properties based on saltation (Berwick, 1998 � Bickerton, 1990, 1998) or genetic assimilation (Pinker and Bloom, 1990). But none provide a coherent detailed account of both the emergence and maintenance of a LAD in an evolving population. The account proposed here is that a minimal LAD emerged via recruitment of general-purpose (Bayesian) learning mechanisms (e.g. Staddon, 1988 � Cosmides and Tooby, 1996) to a speci cally-linguistic mental representation capable of expressing mappings from the `language of thought ' to realizable, essentially linearized, encodings of propositions of the language of thought. However, the selective pressure favouring such adevelopment, and its subsequent maintenance and re nement, is only coherent given a coevolutionary scenario in which a (proto)language supporting successful communication within a population had already itself evolved on a historical timescale (e.g. Hurford, 1987 � Kirby, 1998 � Steels, 1998) and continued to coevolve with the LAD (e.g. Briscoe, 1997, 1998a,b). The model of the LAD presented here builds on and extends previous work in the parameter setting