Synthesising the origins of language and meaning using co-evolution, self-organisation and level formation

Abstract

The paper reports on experiments in which robotic agents and software agents are set up to originate language and meaning. The experiments test the hypothesis that mechanisms for generating complexity commonly found in biosystems, in particular self-organisation, co-evolution, and level formation, also may explain the spontaneous formation, adaptation, and growth in complexity of language. Keywords: origins of language, origins of meaning, self-organisation, distributed agents, open systems. 1 Introduction A good way to test a model of a particular phenomenon is to build simulations or artificial systems that exhibit the same or similar phenomena as one tries to model. This methodology can also be applied to the problem of the origins of language and meaning. Concretely, experiments with robotic agents and software agents could be set up to test whether certain hypothesised mechanisms indeed lead to the formation of language and the creation of new meaning. This paper reports on re...