Gamifying language evolution
Christine Cuskley (University of Edinburgh)
Tuesday 7 November, 11:00 – 12:30
G32, 7 George Square
At the heart of language are shared conventions: from the rules that we use and how we inflect them, to the vast lexicon we use to describe the world, language works because conventions are shared across a population of speakers. Thus, a crucial question for language evolution is how we come to have shared conventions: how these emerge, how they change over time, and how they decline. In this talk, I will present some early studies of a novel virtual signal modality called Ferro, which allows for truly “alien” artificial language learning. Early results suggest that while Ferro are difficult to learn, they share some interesting features with linguistic articulation spaces which may have strong effects on learning biases. The end goal of the Ferro palette is multi-player game called FerroCell, which will allow us to see conventions emerging and evolving in player populations with realistic interaction networks. I’ll outline what FerroCell will look like, and what we hope to learn in the first “petri-dish” experimental game in language evolution.