Symbol grounding and the origin of language
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Alexandre Blondin Massé
Abstract
Organisms’ adaptive success depends on being able to do the right thing with the right kind of thing. This is categorization. Most species can learn categories (1) by direct experience (“induction”). Only human beings can learn categories (2) by word of mouth (“instruction”). Artificial-life simulations have shown the evolutionary advantage of instruction over induction and human electrophysiology experiments have shown that these two radically different ways of acquiring categories still share some common features in our brains today. Graph-theoretic analyses reveal that dictionaries consist of a core of more concrete words that are learned earlier, by direct experience (induction); the meanings of the rest of the dictionary can be learned by definition (instruction) alone, by combining the inductively grounded core words into subject/predicate propositions with truth values. We conjecture that language began when attempts to communicate through miming became conventionalized into arbitrary sequences of shared, increasingly arbitrary category names that made it possible for members of our species to transmit new categories to one another by defining and describing them via propositions (instruction).
Abstract
Organisms’ adaptive success depends on being able to do the right thing with the right kind of thing. This is categorization. Most species can learn categories (1) by direct experience (“induction”). Only human beings can learn categories (2) by word of mouth (“instruction”). Artificial-life simulations have shown the evolutionary advantage of instruction over induction and human electrophysiology experiments have shown that these two radically different ways of acquiring categories still share some common features in our brains today. Graph-theoretic analyses reveal that dictionaries consist of a core of more concrete words that are learned earlier, by direct experience (induction); the meanings of the rest of the dictionary can be learned by definition (instruction) alone, by combining the inductively grounded core words into subject/predicate propositions with truth values. We conjecture that language began when attempts to communicate through miming became conventionalized into arbitrary sequences of shared, increasingly arbitrary category names that made it possible for members of our species to transmit new categories to one another by defining and describing them via propositions (instruction).
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Preface vii
- Introduction ix
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Part 1. General perspectives and issues on language origins
- Historical, Darwinian, and current perspectives on the origin(s) of language 3
- The origin of language as seen by eighteenth-century philosophy 31
- Cognitive and social aspects of language origins 53
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Part 2. At the roots of language
- Reconstructed fossil vocal tracts and the production of speech 75
- Paleoanthropology and language 129
- Material culture and language 147
- Gestural theory of the origins of language 171
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Part 3. Communication and language origins
- Primate communication 187
- FoxP2 and vocalization 211
- Brain lateralization and the emergence of language 237
- Sensorimotor constraints and the organization of sound patterns 257
- Symbol grounding and the origin of language 279
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Part 4. Linguistic views on language origins
- Sound patterns and conceptual content of the first words 301
- Brave new words 333
- On the origin of Grammar 379
- Arbitrary signs and the emergence of language 407
- On the relevance of pidgins and creoles in the debate on the origins of language 441
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Part 5. Computational modeling of language origins
- Modeling cultural evolution 487
- How language emerges in situated embodied interactions 505
- Emergence of communication and language in evolving robots 533
- Evolving a bridge from praxis to language 555
- Index 579
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Preface vii
- Introduction ix
-
Part 1. General perspectives and issues on language origins
- Historical, Darwinian, and current perspectives on the origin(s) of language 3
- The origin of language as seen by eighteenth-century philosophy 31
- Cognitive and social aspects of language origins 53
-
Part 2. At the roots of language
- Reconstructed fossil vocal tracts and the production of speech 75
- Paleoanthropology and language 129
- Material culture and language 147
- Gestural theory of the origins of language 171
-
Part 3. Communication and language origins
- Primate communication 187
- FoxP2 and vocalization 211
- Brain lateralization and the emergence of language 237
- Sensorimotor constraints and the organization of sound patterns 257
- Symbol grounding and the origin of language 279
-
Part 4. Linguistic views on language origins
- Sound patterns and conceptual content of the first words 301
- Brave new words 333
- On the origin of Grammar 379
- Arbitrary signs and the emergence of language 407
- On the relevance of pidgins and creoles in the debate on the origins of language 441
-
Part 5. Computational modeling of language origins
- Modeling cultural evolution 487
- How language emerges in situated embodied interactions 505
- Emergence of communication and language in evolving robots 533
- Evolving a bridge from praxis to language 555
- Index 579
