Berlin 2008 – wissenschaftliches Programm
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AKSOE: Arbeitskreis Physik sozio-ökonomischer Systeme
AKSOE 12: Dynamics of groups and organizations IV
AKSOE 12.2: Vortrag
Mittwoch, 27. Februar 2008, 15:15–15:45, EW 203
Cultural route to the emergence of linguistic categories — Andrea Baronchelli1, •Vittorio Loreto2,3, and Andrea Puglisi2 — 1Departament de Fisica i Enginyeria Nuclear, Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya, Campus Nord, Modul B4, 08034 Barcelona, Spain — 2Dipartimento di Fisica, "Sapienza" Universita' di Roma, Piazzale Aldo Moro 2, 00185 Rome, Italy — 3Complex Networks Lagrange Laboratory, ISI Foundation, Turin, Italy
Categories provide a coarse grained description of the world. A fundamental question is whether categories simply mirror an underlying structure of nature, or instead come from the complex interactions of human beings among themselves and with the environment. Here we address this question by modeling a population of individuals who co-evolve their own system of symbols and meanings by playing elementary language games. The central result is the emergence of a hierarchical category structure made of two distinct levels: a basic layer, responsible for fine discrimination of the environment, and a shared linguistic layer that groups together perceptions to guarantee communicative success. Remarkably, the number of linguistic categories turns out to be finite and small, as observed in natural languages.