Abstract
The remarkable feature of linguistic communications is the use of symbols for transmitting information and mutual understanding. Deacon (1997) pointed out that humans are symbolic species, namely, we show symbolic cognitive activities such as learning, formation, and manipulation of symbols. In research into the origin and the evolution of language, we should elucidate the emerging process of such symbolic cognitive activities.
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Notes
- 1.
Note that using a connectionist model does not necessarily mean that no symbolic element is involved. For example, in the simple recurrent network introduced by Elman (1995), sequences of words which are discrete representations are fed to the network as inputs.
- 2.
In Harnad’s original article (1990), the term “shape” is used. We reword this as “form” for clarification.
- 3.
An attractor ruin is a region in a state space of a dynamical system, in which an orbit stays for a while like an attractor, but does not stay forever, and escapes from there.
- 4.
Because of the discretisation of the time variable, the model is represented by difference equations, that is, maps, while the original Hopfield model is represented by differential equations.
- 5.
Refer to Nozawa (1992) for the detailed derivation from the Hopfield model.
- 6.
As described later, the parameters T ii , I i , r and β are chosen for the system to show chaotic behaviour and T ij is determined to store some memory patterns in the system.
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Hashimoto, T., Masumi, A. (2007). Learning and Transition of Symbols: Towards a Dynamical Model of a Symbolic Individual. In: Lyon, C., Nehaniv, C.L., Cangelosi, A. (eds) Emergence of Communication and Language. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-84628-779-4_11
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