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Lakkaraju, K., Gasser, L., and Swarup, S. (2008) Language Scaffolding as a Condition for Growth in Linguistic Complexity. In A. D. M. Smith and K. Smith and R. Ferrer-i-Cancho, editors, Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on the Evolution of Language, pages 187--194. World Scientific.
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Abstract

It is widely assumed that, over their evolutionary history, languages increased in complexity from simple signals to protolanguages to complex syntactic structures. This papers investigates processes for increasing linguistic complexity while maintaining communicability across a pop- ulation. We assume that linguistic communicability is important for reliably exchanging infor- mation critical for coordination-based tasks. Interaction, needed for learning others♠languages and converging to communicability, bears a cost. There is a threshold of interaction (learning) effort beyond which convergence either doesnâ™t pay or is practically impossible. Our central findings, established mainly through simulation, are: 1) There is an effort-dependent âœfrontier of tractability❠for agreement on a language that balances linguistic complexity against linguis- tic diversity in a population. For a given maximum convergence effort either a) languages must be simpler, or b) their initial average communicability must be greater. Thus, if either conver- gence cost or high average communicability over time are important, then even agents who have the capability for using complex languages must not invent them from the start; they must start simple and grow. 2) A staged approach to increasing complexity, in which agents initially con- verge on simple languages and then use these to âœscaffold❠greater complexity, can outperform initially-complex languages in terms of overall effort to convergence. This performance gain improves with more complex final languages.
BibTex
@incollection{lakkaraju08evolang7th,
  author={Kiran Lakkaraju and Les Gasser and Samarth Swarup},
  title={Language Scaffolding as a Condition for Growth in Linguistic Complexity},
  year={2008},
  month={March},
  pages={187-194},
  editor={A. D. M. Smith and K. Smith and R. Ferrer-i-Cancho},
  publisher={World Scientific},
  booktitle={Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on the Evolution of Language},
  url={http://www.isrl.uiuc.edu/~amag/langev/paper/lakkaraju08evolang7th.html}
}

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