Emergence of Language and Communication

Recently, the study of the self organization and evolution of language and meaning has led to the idea that language can be seen as a complex dynamical system. In this perspective, the theoretical tools developed in statistical physics and complex systems science acquire a central role for the study of the self generating structures of language systems.

Language is a semiotic system in the sense that it relates signs (words, grammatical constructions) to the world through the intermediary of conceptualization (meanings). Such a semiotic system can then be used for communication in the sense that the conceptualization of an object, when it is distinctive compared to that of other objects, can be used to draw attention to this object (or situation or aspect of situation). Once relaxed the hypothesis of staticity of a language, a natural and very interesting question is how new conventions, developed in local interactions among few individuals, can become stable in the whole population. Answering to this question is one of the aim of the novel field called Semiotic Dynamics.

Our group is part of the ECAgents european project http://www.ecagents.org.

Publications (in reverse chronological order):

• L. Dall'Asta, A. Baronchelli, A. Barrat and V. Loreto (2006), Agreement dynamics on small-world networks, in press in Europhys. Lett.

• A. Baronchelli, L. Dall'Asta, A. Barrat and V. Loreto (2006), Topology induced coarsening in language games, Phys. Rev. E 73, 015102(R). [ http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0512045 ]

• A. Baronchelli, L. Dall'Asta, A. Barrat and V. Loreto (2006), Strategies for fast convergence in semiotic dynamics, accepted for the proceedings of the ALIFEX conference, June 3-7, 2006 Bloomington, IN USA. [ http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0511201 ]

• A. Baronchelli, L. Dall'Asta, A. Barrat and V. Loreto (2006), Bootstrapping communication in language games. Strategy, topology and all that, accepted for the proceedings of the EVOLANG 6 conference 12-15 April 2006, Rome Italy.

• A. Baronchelli, M. Felici, E. Caglioti, V. Loreto and L. Steels (2005), Self-organizing communication in language games, Proceedings of the First European Conference on Complex Systems ECCS'05, Paris (France), November 2005.

• A. Baronchelli, M. Felici, E. Caglioti, V. Loreto and L. Steels (2005), Sharp transition towards shared lexicon in multi-agent systems preprint. [ http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0509075 ]

-- VittorioLoreto - 18 Jul 2006