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Biological Evolution of the Saussurean Sign as a Component of the Language Acquisition Device

This study explores a model proposing an explanation for early language development. It discusses the innate and functional components of language acquisition, focusing on the advantages of Saussurean strategies. The simulation results and discussions shed light on the dominance of certain language acquisition strategies within populations, emphasizing communicative success and selective advantages.

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Biological Evolution of the Saussurean Sign as a Component of the Language Acquisition Device

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  1. Biological Evolution of the Saussurean Sign as a Component of the Language Acquisition Device James R. Hurford University of Edinburgh, Scotland Presented by Laurel Preston May 17, 2006 Linguistics 580, Professor Lewis

  2. Overview • Purpose • Assumptions • Machinery • Simulations • Results • Discussion

  3. Purpose • To propose an explanatory model of early stage language. • Nativist component: innate strategy for acquiring a communication system • Functional component: evolutionary mechanism whereby communicative success confers a selective advantage Summary of model: Communicative success confers a selective advantage Innate Saussurean strategy is the most advantageous for communicative success Saussurean individuals invade population, displacing rivals

  4. Simulation Summary • Initial populations with defined communicative behavior • Individuals with different strategies for language acquisition • Assume: communicative success confers selective advantage • Discover: which individuals come to dominate the population?

  5. Assumptions Saussurean bi-directional sign: the “fundamental formal structure” underlying human language

  6. Assumptions, continued • Language evolved for the purpose of communication • Early stage language existed; no syntax • Acquisition strategy can be transmitted genetically • Darwinian natural selection • Mendelian genetics • Transmission and reception are logically distinct

  7. Machinery: definitions • Successful communication • “any encounter between individuals where one (the transmitter), while mentally attending to a particular concept, carries out some observable act (which may be a gesture, a vocalization, or whatever), and another individual (the receiver), as a result of observing this act comes to attend to the same concept.” p.191

  8. Machinery: definitions (2) • Communicative potential, interpretive potential For individuals s, h and objects o:

  9. Machinery: definitions (3) • Matrix of transmission probabilities • Matrix of reception probabilities objects signals signals objects

  10. Machinery: definitions (3a) Matrix of transmission probabilities objects signals

  11. Machinery: definitions (3b) Matrix of reception probabilities signals objects

  12. Machinery: definitions (4) • Strategy • Component of the Language Acquisition Device • Individuals with different strategies will observe the same data but construct different internal representations • ‘strategy’ does not imply conscious intention or control

  13. Strategies: Imitator Transmission Reception Transmission^ Reception^ • transmission and interpretation are not necessarily coordinated • happy to imitate correct or incorrect behavior

  14. Strategies: Calculator Reception^ Transmission^ Transmission Reception • ‘optimal response’ to the observed sampling • transmission and interpretation are not necessarily coordinated

  15. Strategies: Saussurean Transmission Reception^ Transmission^ • acquisition of transmission is the same as for Imitator • transmission and interpretation are necessarily coordinated • never observes/samples transmission

  16. Simulations • Given: starting populations with different CPs: Random, Emergent, Perfect • 30 individuals, 5 objects, 7 signals • 20 simulations of each scenario; 100 generations • 3-way competitive simulations: 10 individuals from each strategy population • 2-way competitive simulations: 15 individuals from two of the strategy populations at a time: I vs C, C vs S, I vs S • 1-way non-competitive simluations

  17. Results: competitive

  18. Results: Calculators only

  19. Results: Imitators only

  20. Results: Saussureans only

  21. Discussion • How is ambiguity modeled? • Homonomy, synonomy • Calculators can’t say ‘I don’t know’; they have to guess • “I do not believe that I have loaded the dice by idealizing any of these strategies in such a way as to render it less (or more) successful” (p.221) • Do we agree?

  22. Calculator deriving reception behavior from observed transmission behavior signals objects signals objects

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