Abstract
Over the last few decades there has been a surge of interest in the origin of meaning and language. Computer simulations based on rigorous assumptions regarding the underlying mechanisms of language acquisition were used to explain both the origin of vocabulary and grammatical constructs. In general the idea is that through social interactions stable language dispositions, like meaning-word associations, spread through a population of agents. The manner in which these interactions occur define the cultural transmission structure (Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman 1981; Boyd and Richerson 1985). Furthermore, the culturally transmitted artifacts, i.e. meaning-word associations, provide information which allows the agents to alter their internal language knowledge (lexicon). Different mechanisms can again be used and depend partially on the cultural transmission structure on which the model is focussing. We will refer to them as the cultural learning mechanisms (Tomasello et al. 1993). The combination of transmission structure and learning mechanism seems to define currently the category to which the language evolution model belongs.
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© 2006 Tom Lenaerts and Bart de Vylder
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Lenaerts, T., de Vylder, B. (2006). On the Evolutionary Dynamics of Meaning-Word Associations. In: Benz, A., Jäger, G., van Rooij, R. (eds) Game Theory and Pragmatics. Palgrave Studies in Pragmatics, Language and Cognition. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230285897_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230285897_10
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
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