Cultural route to the emergence of linguistic categories

Categories provide a coarse-grained description of the world. A fundamental question is whether categories simply mirror an underlying structure of nature or instead come from the complex interactions of human beings among themselves and with the environment. Here, we address this question by modeli...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS 2008-06, Vol.105 (23), p.7936-7940
Main Authors: Puglisi, Andrea, Baronchelli, Andrea, Loreto, Vittorio
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Colors
Communication systems
Complex systems
Computational linguistics
Computer Simulation
Culture
Environment
Humans
Language
Linguistics
Models, Biological
Names
Physical Sciences
Social evolution
Social Sciences
Steels
Structural linguistics
Symbols
Words
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Summary:Categories provide a coarse-grained description of the world. A fundamental question is whether categories simply mirror an underlying structure of nature or instead come from the complex interactions of human beings among themselves and with the environment. Here, we address this question by modeling a population of individuals who co-evolve their own system of symbols and meanings by playing elementary language games. The central result is the emergence of a hierarchical category structure made of two distinct levels: a basic layer, responsible for fine discrimination of the environment, and a shared linguistic layer that groups together perceptions to guarantee communicative success. Remarkably, the number of linguistic categories turns out to be finite and small, as observed in natural languages.
ISSN:0027-8424
1091-6490
DOI:10.1073/pnas.0802485105