Self-organising vocabularies

Abstract

This paper applies another mechanism than genetic evolution for structure formation to the problem of language formation, namely self-organisation. Self-organisation occurs in complex dynamical systems which are coupled in a particular way. Standard examples are the formation of a termite nest [2] or a path in an ant society. This paper focuses on the formation of vocabularies, i.e. a set of couplings between words and meanings. A common vocabulary will be viewed as a selforganising phenomenon similar to a path in an ant society. Each agent is assumed to create his own vocabulary in a random fashion. But agents are coupled because they must share vocabularies in order to obtain the benefit of cooperating through communication. Agents therefore keep changing their own private vocabulary until it is conform to the common vocabulary. It will be shown that under certain conditions a coherent but still evolving vocabulary emerges. The rest of the paper is in three parts. The first section introduces the kernel mechanism responsible for self-organisation. The second section introduces a spatio-temporal dynamics which ensures that the kernel mechanism copes with combinatorial explosions. The final section reports the results of some simulation experiments. 2 The self-organising kernel

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