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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 Loreto^2,3, 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.