The emergence of simple languages in an experimental coordination game

Abstract

We investigate in a series of laboratory experiments how costs and benefits of linguistic communication affect the emergence of simple languages in a coordination task when no common language is available in the beginning. The experiment involved pairwise computerized communication between 152 subjects involved in at least 60 rounds. The subjects had to develop a common code referring to items in varying lists of geometrical figures distinguished by up to three features. A code had to be made of a limited repertoire of letters. Using letters had a cost. We are interested in the question of whether a common code is developed, and what enhances its emergence. Furthermore, we explore the emergence of compositional, protogrammatical structure in such codes. We compare environments that differ in terms of available linguistic resources (number of letters available) and in terms of stability of the task environment (variability in the set of figures). Our experiments show that a too small repertoire of letters causes coordination failures. Cost efficiency and role asymmetry are important factors enhancing communicative success. In stable environments, grammars do not seem to matter much, and instead efficient arbitrary codes often do better. However, in an environment with novelty, compositional grammars offer considerable coordination advantages and therefore are more likely to arise.communication ͉ compositionality ͉ economics of language A ccording to the linguist André Martinet, language is shaped ''by the permanent conflict between man's communicative needs and his tendency to reduce to a minimum his mental and physical activity'' (1). This means that the benefits of communication are compared with the memory and articulation costs of linguistic expression. A tendency toward the optimization of the difference between benefits and costs is postulated.Even if many contemporary linguists would disagree with Martinet's view, it is widely recognized that some sort of economizing principle is at work in shaping human language: for example, Chomsky's (2) ''minimalist program'' relies on assumptions of economy of derivation and representation, and on principles of least effort. However, he maintains that ''questions concerning abstract computational mechanisms are distinct from those concerning communication'' (3). Another interesting approach to language structure is optimality theory (4), which postulates a process of constraint satisfaction that guides the shaping of linguistic outputs.A recent, growing body of literature has exploited principles of communication effectiveness and efficiency to model, mathematically or by computer simulation, the emergence of grammatical languages from initial no communication (5-10). As will become apparent later, the basic models used in this literature have some resemblance with the structure of our experiments.Moreover, we should mention a long tradition of using principles of least effort to explain and model language statistical regularities like Zipf's law in word distribution ...

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