Related papers: Human Communication Systems Evolve by Cultural Sel…
Because human cognition is creative and socially situated, knowledge accumulates, diffuses, and gets applied in new contexts, generating cultural analogs of phenomena observed in population genetics such as adaptation and drift. It is…
The distribution of cultural variants in a population is shaped by both neutral evolutionary dynamics and by selection pressures, which include several individual cognitive biases, demographic factors and social network structures. The…
In contrast with animal communication systems, diversity is characteristic of almost every aspect of human language. Languages variously employ tones, clicks, or manual signs to signal differences in meaning; some languages lack the…
Languages and genes are both transmitted from generation to generation, with opportunity for differential reproduction and survivorship of forms. Here we apply a rigorous inference framework, drawn from population genetics, to distinguish…
One can study communications by using Shannon's (1948) mathematical theory of communication. In social communications, however, the channels are not "fixed", but themselves subject to change. Communication systems change by communicating…
Evolution and propagation of the world's languages is a complex phenomenon, driven, to a large extent, by social interactions. Multilingual society can be seen as a system of interacting agents, where the interaction leads to a modification…
The processes leading to change in languages are manifold. In order to reduce ambiguity in the transmission of information, agreement on a set of conventions for recurring problems is favored. In addition to that, speakers tend to use…
Human languages have evolved to be structured through repeated language learning and use. These processes introduce biases that operate during language acquisition and shape linguistic systems toward communicative efficiency. In this paper,…
Languages are shaped by the inductive biases of their users. Using a classical referential game, we investigate how artificial languages evolve when optimised for inductive biases in humans and large language models (LLMs) via Human-Human,…
Humans' distinctive role in the world can largely be attributed to our capacity for iterated learning, a process by which knowledge is expanded and refined over generations. A range of theories seek to explain why humans are so adept at…
Computational modelling with multi-agent systems is becoming an important technique of studying language evolution. We present a brief introduction into this rapidly developing field, as well as our own contributions that include an…
This paper introduces how human languages can be studied in light of recent development of network theories. There are two directions of exploration. One is to study networks existing in the language system. Various lexical networks can be…
The evolution of language has been a hotly debated subject with contradicting hypotheses and unreliable claims. Drawing from signalling games, dynamic population mechanics, machine learning and algebraic topology, we present a method for…
Human sociality depends upon the benefits of mutual aid and extensive communication. However mutual aid is made difficult by the problems of coordinating diverse norms and preferences, and communication is harried by substantial ambiguity…
Although information theoretic characterizations of human communication have become increasingly popular in linguistics, to date they have largely involved grafting probabilistic constructs onto older ideas about grammar. Similarities…
Human beings are talkative. What advantage did their ancestors find in communicating so much? Numerous authors consider this advantage to be "obvious" and "enormous". If so, the problem of the evolutionary emergence of language amounts to…
Humans interact with each other on a daily basis by developing and maintaining various social norms and it is critical to form a deeper understanding of how such norms develop, how they change, and how fast they change. In this work, we…
Humans continuously adapt their style and language to a variety of domains. However, a reliable definition of `domain' has eluded researchers thus far. Additionally, the notion of discrete domains stands in contrast to the multiplicity of…
Languages vary considerably in syntactic structure. About 40% of the world's languages have subject-verb-object order, and about 40% have subject-object-verb order. Extensive work has sought to explain this word order variation across…
Discursive knowledge emerges as codification in flows of communication. The flows of communication are constrained and enabled by networks of communications as their historical manifestations at each moment of time. New publications modify…