Social symbol grounding and language evolution

This chapter focuses on recent studies on the origins and evolution of language which have used multiple robot systems as their primary platform. After presenting some theoretical background regarding language evolution and the symbol grounding problem, the chapter discusses a number of themes within the evolutionary linguistics that have been subject of robotic studies this far. These themes include categorisation, the formation of vocabularies, the evolution of grammar and the emergence of meaningful communication. Following this review, future avenues for research are discussed. The objective of the chapter is to present why robotics is a fruitful approach to study language origins and evolution, identify the main topics, report the major achievements and problems and provide a roadmap to future studies. The chapter concludes that robotics is, indeed, a very promising methodology to study language evolution and that, although many insights have been gained, we are still closer to the starting point than to the endpoint.

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Social symbol grounding and language evolution

Interaction Studies ◽

10.1075/is.8.1.04vog ◽

2007 ◽

Vol 8 (1) ◽

pp. 31-52 ◽

Cited By ~ 20

Author(s):

Paul Vogt ◽

Federico Divina

Keyword(s):

Virtual Environment ◽

Communication System ◽

Language Evolution ◽

Symbol Grounding ◽

Complex Environment ◽

Learning Mechanisms ◽

The Social ◽

Symbol Grounding Problem ◽

Grounding Problem ◽

Large Populations

This paper illustrates how external (or social) symbol grounding can be studied in simulations with large populations. We discuss how we can simulate language evolution in a relatively complex environment which has been developed in the context of the New Ties project. This project has the objective of evolving a cultural society and, in doing so, the agents have to evolve a communication system that is grounded in their interactions with their virtual environment and with other individuals. A preliminary experiment is presented in which we investigate the effect of a number of learning mechanisms. The results show that the social symbol grounding problem is a particularly hard one; however, we provide an ideal platform to study this problem.

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Language Evolution and Syntactic Theory

10.1017/cbo9780511596919 ◽

2009 ◽

Cited By ~ 14

Author(s):

Anna R. Kinsella

Keyword(s):

Language Evolution ◽

Syntactic Theory

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Language Evolution and Development

Contemporary Psychology ◽

10.1037/033338 ◽

1993 ◽

Vol 38 (5) ◽

pp. 520-522

Author(s):

Richard P. Meier

Keyword(s):

Language Evolution ◽

Evolution And Development

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The English Language: Evolution from Tribal to Global and Transformation from Commodification to Simplification – An Insight.

Proceedings Papers of ICABEP 2019 ◽

10.23918/icabep2019p49 ◽

2019 ◽

Keyword(s):

English Language ◽

Language Evolution

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The Russian Language at the Turn of the Century: Semantic Capability and Development Prospects

Slavic World in the Third Millennium ◽

10.31168/2412-6446.2018.3-4.1.13 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 13 (3-4) ◽

pp. 150-169

Author(s):

Svetlana N. Perevolochanskaya

Keyword(s):

Information Technologies ◽

Language Evolution ◽

Turn Of The Century ◽

Russian Language ◽

First Century ◽

Linguistic Knowledge ◽

Current State ◽

Linguistic Sign ◽

Development Prospects ◽

The Russian Language

The article considers the current state of the Russian language. Information technologies in the twenty first century present diverse forms of linguistic knowledge and modalities of knowledge quantisation in a linguistic sign. The Russian language develops from a standard, direct expression of thoughts to a nonstandard, psychologically complex, associative deep statement of thoughts. In the early nineteenth century, during the democratisation of the Russian language, a national genius, Alexander Pushkin, emerged. Thanks to him, the unique informational, cultural, and artistic evolution of the language took place. Nowadays, while democratisation and globalisation, processes which resemble the language evolution 200 years ago, are occurring. These processes suggest some patterns: overcoming stylistic disparity, changes in linguistic sign boundaries and semantic extension.

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Clash of signs: Putting bilingualism back into language evolution

10.31234/osf.io/5uebp ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Steven Samuel

Keyword(s):

Language Evolution ◽

Modern Human ◽

Alarm Calls ◽

Bilingual Children ◽

Human Language ◽

Typically Developing ◽

Typically Developing Children ◽

Modern Humans ◽

The Real ◽

Multiple Languages

Research and thinking into the cognitive aspects of language evolution has usually attempted to account for how the capacity for learning even one modern human language developed. Bilingualism has perhaps been thought of as something to think about only once the ‘real’ puzzle of monolingualism is solved, but this would assume in turn (and without evidence) that bilingualism evolved after monolingualism. All typically-developing children (and adults) are capable of learning multiple languages, and the majority of modern humans are at least bilingual. In this paper I ask whether by skipping bilingualism out of language evolution we have missed a trick. I propose that exposure to synonymous signs, such as food and alarm calls, are a necessary precondition for the abstracting away of sound from referent. In support of this possibility is evidence that modern day bilingual children are better at breaking this ‘word magic’ spell. More generally, language evolution should be viewed through the lens of bilingualism, as this is the end state we are attempting to explain.

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The speakers of minority languages are more multilingual

International Journal of Bilingualism ◽

10.1177/13670069211023150 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 136700692110231

Author(s):

Nina Dobrushina ◽

George Moroz

Keyword(s):

Empirical Data ◽

Design Methodology ◽

Language Evolution ◽

First Language ◽

Large Body ◽

Mixed Effects ◽

Minority Languages ◽

Language Community ◽

Second Languages ◽

Research Questions

Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions: The paper tests the hypothesis that the larger the population of language speakers, the smaller the number of second languages mastered by these speakers. Design/methodology/approach: We match the size of the population of 29 Dagestanian languages and the number of second languages spoken by the speakers of these languages from 54 villages, and run a Poisson mixed effects regression model that predicts the average number of second languages spoken by speakers from first-language communities of different size. Data and analysis: Data for this study comes from two sources. The information on the population of Dagestanian languages is based on the digitalized census of 1926. The information on the number of second languages in which the residents of Dagestan are proficient is taken from the database on multilingualism in Dagestan (4032 people). Findings/conclusions: The study supports the hypothesis that the size of language population is negatively correlated with the multilingualism of the language community. Originality: The paper is the first to test the correlation between the size of language population and the level of multilingualism of its speakers using statistical methods and a large body of empirical data. Significance and implications: Population size is a factor that could have influenced patterns of language evolution. The population is interrelated with other factors, one of which is long-standing multilingualism. The methodological lesson of this research is that there is a difference in the level of multilingualism within a range of populations where the largest was about 120,000 people. Limitations: The data is limited to one multilingual region. The revealed correlation probably does not hold for areas where language communities do not interact with their neighbors and even speakers of minority languages can be monolingual, or for the territories where many people migrated and the area where a language is spoken was discontinuous.

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