Coevolution of Lexical Meaning and Pragmatic Use
Autor(en): | Brochhagen, Thomas Franke, Michael van Rooij, Robert |
Stichwörter: | BIOLOGICAL EVOLUTION; CATEGORIES; CULTURAL-EVOLUTION; EMERGENCE; Evolutionary game theory; GAME; LANGUAGE; Language evolution; MODEL; Pragmatics; Psychology; Psychology, Experimental; REINFORCEMENT; RULE; SCALAR IMPLICATURES; Semantics | Erscheinungsdatum: | 2018 | Herausgeber: | WILEY | Journal: | COGNITIVE SCIENCE | Volumen: | 42 | Ausgabe: | 8 | Startseite: | 2757 | Seitenende: | 2789 | Zusammenfassung: | According to standard linguistic theory, the meaning of an utterance is the product of conventional semantic meaning and general pragmatic rules on language use. We investigate how such a division of labor between semantics and pragmatics could evolve under general processes of selection and learning. We present a game-theoretic model of the competition between types of language users, each endowed with certain lexical representations and a particular pragmatic disposition to act on them. Our model traces two evolutionary forces and their interaction: (i) pressure toward communicative efficiency and (ii) transmission perturbations during the acquisition of linguistic knowledge. We illustrate the model based on a case study on scalar implicatures, which suggests that the relationship between underspecified semantics and pragmatic inference is one of coevolution. |
ISSN: | 03640213 | DOI: | 10.1111/cogs.12681 |
Show full item record