Cultural route to the emergence of linguistic categories Export

@article{citeulike:2859915, abstract = {Categories provide a coarse-grained description of the world. A fundamental question is whether categories simply mirror an underlying structure of nature or instead come from the complex interactions of human beings among themselves and with the environment. Here, we address this question by modeling a population of individuals who co-evolve their own system of symbols and meanings by playing elementary language games. The central result is the emergence of a hierarchical category structure made of two distinct levels: a basic layer, responsible for fine discrimination of the environment, and a shared linguistic layer that groups together perceptions to guarantee communicative success. Remarkably, the number of linguistic categories turns out to be finite and small, as observed in natural languages. 10.1073/pnas.0802485105}, author = {Puglisi, Andrea and Baronchelli, Andrea and Loreto, Vittorio}, citeulike-article-id = {2859915}, citeulike-linkout-0 = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0802485105}, citeulike-linkout-1 = {http://www.pnas.org/content/105/23/7936.full.abstract}, citeulike-linkout-2 = {http://www.pnas.org/content/105/23/7936.full.full.pdf}, citeulike-linkout-3 = {http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/802485105//}, citeulike-linkout-4 = {http://www.isrl.uiuc.edu/~amag/langev/paper/puglisi08culturalRoutePNAS.html}, citeulike-linkout-5 = {http://view.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18523014}, citeulike-linkout-6 = {http://www.hubmed.org/display.cgi?uids=18523014}, day = {3}, doi = {10.1073/pnas.0802485105}, journal = {Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences}, keywords = {categories, colors, cultural, emergence, evolution, game, language}, month = {June}, pages = {0802485105+}, posted-at = {2008-06-12 09:22:22}, priority = {0}, title = {Cultural route to the emergence of linguistic categories}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0802485105}, year = {2008} }

TY - JOUR ID - citeulike:2859915 L3 - citeulike-article-id:2859915 N2 - Categories provide a coarse-grained description of the world. A fundamental question is whether categories simply mirror an underlying structure of nature or instead come from the complex interactions of human beings among themselves and with the environment. Here, we address this question by modeling a population of individuals who co-evolve their own system of symbols and meanings by playing elementary language games. The central result is the emergence of a hierarchical category structure made of two distinct levels: a basic layer, responsible for fine discrimination of the environment, and a shared linguistic layer that groups together perceptions to guarantee communicative success. Remarkably, the number of linguistic categories turns out to be finite and small, as observed in natural languages. 10.1073/pnas.0802485105 JF - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences TI - Cultural route to the emergence of linguistic categories SP - 0802485105 KW - categories KW - colors KW - cultural KW - emergence KW - evolution KW - game KW - language AU - Puglisi, Andrea AU - Baronchelli, Andrea AU - Loreto, Vittorio PY - 2008/06/03/ UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0802485105 ER -