The Recruitment Theory of Language Origins
An entry by Robert Cerny to Luc Steels’ acquisition of language research:
Note
Section 5, titled “The Naming Challenge”, describes a game in the field of robotics where agents need to find a way to communicate about a set of objects. This game is known as the “Naming Game”. It is interesting to look at these insights with a Topic Mappish mindset. It also confirms my point that subject descriptions decay in space and time.
Quote
Clearly every human language has a way to name individual objects or more generally categories to identify classes of objects. Computer simulations have already been carried out to determine what strategy for tackling this naming challenge could have become innate through natural selection or how a shared lexicon could arise through a simulation of genetic evolution.
The recruitment theory argues instead that each agent should autonomonously discover strategies that allow him to successfully build up and negotiate a shared lexicon in peer-to-peer interaction and that the emerging lexicon is a temporal cultural consensus which is culturally transmitted.
Follow the link at Robert’s post to read Steels paper in full. It’s important.