The role of learning in the evolution of semantic extremeness
Fausto Carcassi (CLE, University of Edinburgh)
Tuesday, January 28
11:30am – 12:30pm
Room S38, 7 George Square
Some words in natural language express categories that are extreme in the sense that they cover only an extremum of the underlying scale. For instance, the absolute adjective “full” expresses a category covering only the maximum of the scale of fullness. The evolution of extremeness poses an interesting puzzle, because extreme categories seem prima facie suboptimal for communication and difficult to learn. Some explanations of how extreme categories might come about have been proposed in the literature (Franke (2012), Lassiter & Goodman (2013), Qing & Franke (2015)). These previous accounts focus on the role of communication in the evolution of extremeness. We present work attempting to elucidate the role of learning in the evolution of extreme categories. We show in an IL model that even in the absence of a bias and pressure for communicative accuracy, extreme categories can evolve often.