Abstract
Pure synonymy is rare. By contrast, homonymy is common in languages. Human avoidance of synonymy is plausibly innate, as theorists of differing persuasions have claimed. Innate dispositions to synonymy and homonymy are modelled here, in relation to alternative roles of speaking and hearing in determining fitness.
In the computer model, linguistic signs are acquired via different genetically determined strategies, variously (in)tolerant to synonymy or homonymy. The model defines communicative success as the probability of a speaker getting a message across to a hearer; interpretive success is the probability of a hearer correctly interpreting a speaker’s signal. Communicative and interpretive success are compared as bases for reproductive fitness. When communicative success is the basis for fitness, a genotype evolves which is averse to synonymy, while tolerating homonymy. Conversely, when interpretive success is the basis for fitness, a genotype evolves which is averse to homonymy, while tolerating synonymy.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Ackley, D., Littman, M.: Altruism in the Evolution of Communication. Artificial Life 4, 40–48 (1994)
Clark, E.V.: On the Pragmatics of Contrast. Journal of Child Language 17, 417–431 (1990)
Hurford, J.R.: Biological Evolution of the Saussurean Sign as a Component of the Language Acquisition Device. Lingua 77, 187–222 (1989)
Kirby, S.: Spontaneous evolution of linguistic structure: an iterated learning model of the emergence of regularity and irregularity. IEEE Journal of Evolutionary Computation 5(2), 102–110 (2001)
Kirby, S., Hurford, J.R.: Learning, culture and evolution in the origin of linguistic constraints. In: Husbands, P., Harvey, I. (eds.) Fourth European Conference on Artificial Life. MIT Press, Cambridge (1997)
Kirby, S., Hurford, J.R.: The Emergence of Linguistic Structure: An overview of the Iterated Learning Model. In: Cangelosi, A., Parisi, D. (eds.) Simulating the Evolution of Language. Springer, Heidelberg (2002)
Markman, E.M.: Categorization and Naming in Children: Problems of Induction. MIT Press, Cambridge (1989) [esp. Chs 8 & 9]
Oliphant, M., Batali, J.: Learning and the Emergence of Coordinated Communication. Center for Research on Language Newsletter, 11(1). University of California, San Diego (1997)
Pinker, S.: Language Learnability and Language Development. Harvard University Press, Cambridge (1984)
Smith, K.: The Importance of Rapid Cultural Convergence in the Evolution of Learned Symbolic Communication. In: Advances in Artificial Life: Proceedings of the 6th European Conference on Artificial Life, pp. 637–640 (2001)
Smith, K.: The Cultural Evolution of Communication in a Population of Neural Networks. Connection Science 14(1), 65–84 (2002)
Smith, K.: The Transmission of Language: models of biological and cultural evolution, PhD thesis, University of Edinburgh (2003)
Steels, L.: The Talking Heads Experiment. Words and Meanings, vol. 1. Laboratorium, Antwerpen (1999) (special pre-edition)
Steels, L., Kaplan, F., McIntyre, A., van Looveren, J.: Crucial Factors in the Origins of Word-Meaning. In: Wray, A. (ed.) The Transition to Language. Oxford University Press, Oxford (2002)
Werner, G., Dyer, M.: Evolution of Communication in Artificial Organisms. Artificial Life 2, 659–687 (1992)
Wexler, P., Culicover, P.: Formal Principles of Language Acquisition. MIT Press, Cambridge (1980)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2003 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Hurford, J.R. (2003). Why Synonymy Is Rare: Fitness Is in the Speaker. In: Banzhaf, W., Ziegler, J., Christaller, T., Dittrich, P., Kim, J.T. (eds) Advances in Artificial Life. ECAL 2003. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 2801. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-39432-7_47
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-39432-7_47
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-20057-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-39432-7
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive