9 - Agent-Based Models of Language Emergence: Structure Favors the Orangutan

Summary

For any form of communication to make it beyond the category of talking to oneself, at least two individuals must share a common lexicon. Before languages can evolve into more complex forms, there must first be a pragmatic sense in which one individual can communicate a basic idea to another. How might shared lexicons have originated? Standard explorations of language often look in well-connected social groups such as chimpanzees, frequently numbering in the tens of individuals. But we might ask if language perhaps didn’t begin in a more humble arrangement, involving social groups of just two or a few individuals, such as that found in the orangutan? Agent-based models combined with network science offer a way to study this problem. By treating nodes as agents with strict rule-based behavior and edges as opportunities for interaction, agent-based models provide frameworks for studying how behavior and connectivity interact to create emergent phenomenon, such as the evolution of cooperation and cultural change. Here we will explore an agent-based model of the naming game to address how structure influences the emergence of shared lexicons.