The emergence of word order and morphology in compositional languages via multigenerational signaling games

IF 2.1 0 LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS
Iga Nowak, Giosuè Baggio
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引用次数: 21

Abstract

The experimental study of language change may provide novel insights into the nature of language, in particular on the role of cognitive biases and social processes in shaping grammatical and semantic structures. Here, we introduce multigenerational signaling games (MGSGs) as a new experimental paradigm for investigating how simple compositional languages emerge and change during transmission across generations in a diffusion chain, where each transmission step requires coordination between sender and receiver in a signaling game. We obtained three main results. First, we replicate and extend earlier findings by Moreno and Baggio suggesting that, in signaling games with fixed roles, mappings of signals to meanings tend to be transmitted from senders to receivers. We show that this holds for signaling games played in diffusion chains too, in which the receiver in one game becomes the sender in the next game. Second, we provide an experimental proof of concept that MGSGs are a viable laboratory model of cultural language change. Players consistently agreed upon a common signaling system after repeated signaling rounds, and the resulting code was effectively transmitted and gradually modified over generations. Third, we establish a baseline of results for further research using MGSGs. We found that the order of elements initially imposed on signals is largely maintained by successive generations. Moreover, the degree of coordination among players and the fidelity of inter-generational transmission exhibit a cumulative increase across generations. Finally, replicating a seminal result by Esper, we observed that morphological marking of semantic categories such as agent, action, and patient emerged gradually in the course of transmission.
复合语言中词序和词法在多代信号游戏中的出现
语言变化的实验研究可以为语言的本质提供新的见解,特别是在形成语法和语义结构的认知偏见和社会过程中的作用。在这里,我们引入了多代信号博弈(multigenerational signaling games, MGSGs)作为一种新的实验范式,用于研究简单的组合语言在扩散链中的跨代传播过程中是如何出现和变化的,其中每个传播步骤都需要信号博弈中的发送者和接收者之间的协调。我们得到了三个主要结果。首先,我们复制并扩展了Moreno和Baggio的早期发现,即在具有固定角色的信号游戏中,信号到意义的映射倾向于从发送者传递给接收者。我们表明,这也适用于扩散链中的信号博弈,其中一个博弈的接收者成为下一个博弈的发送者。其次,我们提供了一个实验证明,MGSGs是文化语言变化的一个可行的实验室模型。在重复的信号轮次后,玩家一致同意一个共同的信号系统,结果代码被有效地传递,并在几代人之间逐渐修改。第三,我们建立了使用MGSGs进行进一步研究的结果基线。我们发现最初施加在信号上的元素顺序在很大程度上被连续的代所维持。此外,参与者之间的协调程度和代际传递的保真度在代际间呈现累积增加的趋势。最后,复制Esper的开创性结果,我们观察到agent、action、patient等语义类别的形态学标记在传播过程中逐渐出现。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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来源期刊
Journal of Language Evolution
Journal of Language Evolution Social Sciences-Linguistics and Language
CiteScore
4.50
自引率
7.70%
发文量
8
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