Generating Vowel Systems in a Population of Agents

Bart de Boer

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Language and cultural evolution Phonetics and Phonology Research Animal Vocal Communication and Behavior

Abstract

: In the sound systems of human languages remarkable universals are found. These universals can be explained by innate mechanisms, or by their function in human speech. This paper presents a functional explanation of certain universals of vowel systems using Alife-techniques. It is based on language-like interactions between members of a population of individual agents. The agents start out empty, but have a "drive" to make (vowel) sounds to each other and to imitate these sounds. Through repeated "imitation games" and through modifications of their own sound system, based on the outcome of the imitation games, the agents reach coherence. The sound systems that arise have properties that are similar to those of human vowel systems. Keywords: language origins, cultural evolution, phonological universals 1. Introduction Alife techniques have been used to aid many fields of science, such as biology, ethology and psychology. In this paper alife techniques are applied to...

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1968The Sound Pattern of English 1998The sounds of the world’s languages. By Peter Ladefoged and Ian Maddieson. Oxford Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1996. Pp. xxi, 426. Paper $31.95.1984Patterns of sounds 1972Numerical simulation of vowel quality systems: the role of perceptual contrast 2000The spontaneous self-organization of an adaptive language 1998Synthesising the origins of language and meaning using co-evolution, self-organisation and level formation 1996From Form to Formation of Phonetic Structures: An evolutionary computing perspective

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2005Evolution of Speech and Its Acquisition 2006Adaptive value within natural language discourse 1999SPECIES: An Evolutionary Model for the Emergence of Phonetic Structures in an Artificial Society of Speech Agents 2002A new approach to class formation in multi-agent simulations of language evolution

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