Related papers: Creolizing the Web
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…
We review computational and robotics models of early language learning and development. We first explain why and how these models are used to understand better how children learn language. We argue that they provide concrete theories of…
Language is a social phenomenon and variation is inherent to its social nature. Recently, there has been a surge of interest within the computational linguistics (CL) community in the social dimension of language. In this article we present…
The way the words are used evolves through time, mirroring cultural or technological evolution of society. Semantic change detection is the task of detecting and analysing word evolution in textual data, even in short periods of time. In…
The recent proliferation of research into transformer based natural language processing has led to a number of studies which attempt to detect the presence of human-like cognitive behavior in the models. We contend that, as is true of human…
Computational modeling plays an essential role in the study of language emergence. It aims to simulate the conditions and learning processes that could trigger the emergence of a structured language within a simulated controlled…
Language change is a complex social phenomenon, revealing pathways of communication and sociocultural influence. But, while language change has long been a topic of study in sociolinguistics, traditional linguistic research methods rely on…
The concept of a temporal phylogenetic network is a mathematical model of evolution of a family of natural languages. It takes into account the fact that languages can trade their characteristics with each other when linguistic communities…
Languages are continuously undergoing changes, and the mechanisms that underlie these changes are still a matter of debate. In this work, we approach language evolution through the lens of causality in order to model not only how various…
This paper investigates the knowledge of language models from the perspective of Bayesian epistemology. We explore how language models adjust their confidence and responses when presented with evidence with varying levels of informativeness…
Word evolution refers to the changing meanings and associations of words throughout time, as a byproduct of human language evolution. By studying word evolution, we can infer social trends and language constructs over different periods of…
We introduce a framework for quantifying semantic variation of common words in Communities of Practice and in sets of topic-related communities. We show that while some meaning shifts are shared across related communities, others are…
Language provides simple ways of communicating generalizable knowledge to each other (e.g., "Birds fly", "John hikes", "Fire makes smoke"). Though found in every language and emerging early in development, the language of generalization is…
We study an atomic signaling game under stochastic evolutionary dynamics. There is a finite number of players who repeatedly update from a finite number of available languages/signaling strategies. Players imitate the most fit agents with…
The quest for historically impactful science and technology provides invaluable insight into the innovation dynamics of human society, yet many studies are limited to qualitative and small-scale approaches. Here, we investigate scientific…
The content on the web is in a constant state of flux. New entities, issues, and ideas continuously emerge, while the semantics of the existing conversation topics gradually shift. In recent years, pre-trained language models like BERT…
A key challenge when trying to understand innovation is that it is a dynamic, ongoing process, which can be highly contingent on ephemeral factors such as culture, economics, or luck. This means that any analysis of the real-world process…
Formal modelling provides a toolkit for understanding cultural dynamics, from individual decisions to recurring patterns of change. This chapter explains what models are and why they matter. Using a precise, shared language, they aid…
Automatically evaluating text-based, non-task-oriented dialogue systems (i.e., `chatbots') remains an open problem. Previous approaches have suffered challenges ranging from poor correlation with human judgment to poor generalization and…
One of the most intriguing features of language is its constant change, with ongoing shifts in how meaning is expressed. Despite decades of research, the factors that determine how and why meanings evolve remain only partly understood.…