1887
Volume 30, Issue 1
  • ISSN 0774-5141
  • E-ISSN: 1569-9676
GBP
Buy:£15.00 + Taxes

Abstract

In the context of cultural evolution, we propose a multi-agent model that allows, through pair-wise interactions between homogeneous individuals of a population, to simulate the shift from a syntactic towards a semantic pronominal agreement system. We explore various gender mapping and learning mechanisms that can allow the agents to form a new agreement system using their semantic knowledge about the world. We investigate whether our strategies can yield cohesive clusterings over the semantic space. We notice that the system reaches full convergence in terms of gender preference at population level and that there are multiple successful ways of dividing the semantic space, including one that reflects the so-called , a case attested by a study of a spoken language data.

Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1075/bjl.30.10rad
2016-12-19
2024-04-18
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

References

  1. Audring, Jenny
    2006 “Pronominal gender in spoken Dutch.” Journal of Germanic Linguistics18 (02): 85–116. doi: 10.1017/S1470542706000043
    https://doi.org/10.1017/S1470542706000043 [Google Scholar]
  2. 2008 “Gender assignment and gender agreement: Evidence from pronominal gender languages.” Morphology18 (2): 93–116. doi: 10.1007/s11525‑009‑9124‑y
    https://doi.org/10.1007/s11525-009-9124-y [Google Scholar]
  3. 2009Reinventing pronoun gender. Utrecht: LOT Dissertation Series.
    [Google Scholar]
  4. Beuls, Katrien and Luc Steels
    2013 “Agent-based models of strategies for the emergence and evolution of grammatical agreement.” PLOS ONE8 (3): e58960. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0058960
    https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0058960 [Google Scholar]
  5. Beuls, Katrien , Luc Steels , and Sebastian Höfer
    2012 “The Emergence of Internal Agreement Systems.” InExperiments in Cultural Language Evolution, ed. by Luc Steels , 233–256. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: 10.1075/ais.3.12beu
    https://doi.org/10.1075/ais.3.12beu [Google Scholar]
  6. Charniak, Eugene and Micha Elsner
    2009 “EM works for pronoun anaphora resolution.” InProceedings of the 12th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics, 148–156. Athens: Association for Computational Linguistics.
    [Google Scholar]
  7. Corbett, Greville G.
    1979 “The agreement hierarchy.” Journal of linguistics15 (02): 203–224. doi: 10.1017/S0022226700016352
    https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022226700016352 [Google Scholar]
  8. 2006 “Gender, grammatical.” The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. 2nd Edition. Oxford: Elsevier: 749–756. doi: 10.1016/B0‑08‑044854‑2/00191‑7
    https://doi.org/10.1016/B0-08-044854-2/00191-7 [Google Scholar]
  9. De Vogelaer, Gunther
    2009 “Changing pronominal gender in Dutch.” InLanguage Variation-European Perspectives II: Selected Papers from the 4th International Conference on Language Variation in Europe (ICLaVE 4), Nicosia, June 2007, ed. by Stavroula Tsiplakou , Marilena Karyolemou , and Pavlos Pavlou , Volume2. doi: 10.1075/silv.5.06vog
    https://doi.org/10.1075/silv.5.06vog [Google Scholar]
  10. De Vogelaer, Gunther and Gert De Sutter
    2011 “The geography of gender change: pronominal and adnominal gender in Flemish dialects of Dutch.” Language Sciences33 (1): 192–205. doi: 10.1016/j.langsci.2010.02.001
    https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2010.02.001 [Google Scholar]
  11. De Vos, Lien
    2008 “Pronominale hersemantisering in het Zuid-Nederlandse genussysteem.” Master's thesis, Universiteit Gent – Faculteit Letteren en Wijsbegeerte.
  12. 2013 “On variation in gender agreement: The neutralization of pronominal gender in Dutch.” Synchrony and Diachrony: A dynamic interface133: 237–260. doi: 10.1075/slcs.133.10dev
    https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.133.10dev [Google Scholar]
  13. Hurskainen, Arvi
    2000 “Noun classification in African Languages.” InGender in Grammar and Cognition, ed. by Barbara Unterbeck , Matti Rissanen , Terttu Nevalainen , and Mirja Saari , 665–688. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. doi: 10.1515/9783110802603.665
    https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110802603.665 [Google Scholar]
  14. Labov, William
    2007 “Transmission and diffusion.” Language83: 344–387. doi: 10.1353/lan.2007.0082
    https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2007.0082 [Google Scholar]
  15. Lappin, Shalom and Herbert J Leass
    1994 “An algorithm for pronominal anaphora resolution.” Computational linguistics20 (4): 535–561.
    [Google Scholar]
  16. Lenaerts, Tom , Bart Jansen , Karl Tuyls , and Bart De Vylder
    2005 “The evolutionary language game: An orthogonal approach.” Journal of Theoretical Biology235 (4): 566–582. doi: 10.1016/j.jtbi.2005.02.009
    https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtbi.2005.02.009 [Google Scholar]
  17. Loetzsch, Martin , Pieter Wellens , Joachim De Beule , Joris Bleys , and Remi Van Trijp
    2008 “The babel2 manual.” Technical report, Tech. Rep. AI-Memo 01–08, AI-Lab VUB, Brussels.
  18. Loreto, Vittorio and Luc Steels
    2007 “Social dynamics: Emergence of language.” Nature Physics3 (11): 758–760. doi: 10.1038/nphys770
    https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys770 [Google Scholar]
  19. Manning, Christopher D. , Prabhakar Raghavan , and Hinrich Schiitze
    2008Introduction to Information Retrieval. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi: 10.1017/CBO9780511809071
    https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511809071 [Google Scholar]
  20. Oliphant, Michael
    1997Formal Approaches to Innate and Learned Communication: Laying the Foundation for Language. Ph. D. thesis, Department of Cognitive Science, University of California, San Diego.
    [Google Scholar]
  21. Pijpops, Dirk , Katrien Beuls , and Freek Van de Velde
    2015 “The rise of the verbal weak inflection in Germanic: An agent-based model.” Computational Linguistics in the Netherlands Journal5: 81–102.
    [Google Scholar]
  22. Sasse, Hans-Jurgen
    1993 “Syntactic Categories and Subcategories.” InSyntax. An international handbook of contemporary research., ed. by Joachim Jacobs , Arnim von Stechow , Wolfgang Sternefeld , and Theo Vennemann , 646–686. Berlin: de Gruyter.
    [Google Scholar]
  23. Semplicini, Chiara
    2012 “Dutch Double Gender Nouns: Arbitrary or Motivated Agreement?.” Journal of Germanic Linguistics24 (02): 133–186. doi: 10.1017/S1470542712000025
    https://doi.org/10.1017/S1470542712000025 [Google Scholar]
  24. Siemund, Peter
    2008Pronominal gender in English: A study of English varieties from a cross-linguistic perspective. Routledge.
    [Google Scholar]
  25. Steels, Luc
    2001 “Language games for autonomous robots.” IEEE Intelligent systems16: 16–22.
    [Google Scholar]
  26. 2011 “Introducing Fluid Construction Grammar.” InDesign patterns in Fluid Construction Grammar, ed. by Luc Steels , 3–30. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: 10.1075/cal.11.03ste
    https://doi.org/10.1075/cal.11.03ste [Google Scholar]
  27. Steels, Luc and Frederic Kaplan
    1999 “Collective learning and semiotic dynamics.” InAdvances in artificial life, ed. by Dario Floreano , Jean-Daniel Nicoud , and Francesco Mondada , 679–688. SpringerBerlin Heidelberg. doi: 10.1007/3‑540‑48304‑7_89
    https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-48304-7_89 [Google Scholar]
  28. Steels, Luc and Martin Loetzsch
    2010 “Babel: A Tool for Running Experiments on the Evolution of Language.” InEvolution of Communication and Language in Embodied Agents, ed. by S Nolfi and M Mirolli , 307–313. Berlin: Springer. doi: 10.1007/978‑3‑642‑01250‑1_20
    https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-01250-1_20 [Google Scholar]
  29. 2012 “The Grounded Naming Game.” InExperiments in Cultural Language Evolution, ed. by Luc Steels , 41–59. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: 10.1075/ais.3.04ste
    https://doi.org/10.1075/ais.3.04ste [Google Scholar]
  30. Steels, Luc and Paul Vogt
    1997 “Grounding Adaptive Language Games in Robotic Agents.” InProceedings of the Fourth European Conference on Artificial Life, 474–482. MIT Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  31. Taeldeman, Johan
    2001 “De regenboog van de Vlaamse dialecten..” InHet taallandschap in Vlaanderen, ed. by Johan De Caluwe , Magdalena Devos , and Johan Taeldeman , 49–58. Academia Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  32. Van de Velde, Freek
    2011De nominale constituent: Structuur en geschiedenis. Leuven: Leuven University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  33. Wellens, Pieter
    2012Adaptive Strategies in the Emergence of Lexical Systems. Doctoral dissertation, Vrije Universiteit Brussel – Faculteit Wetenschappen.
    [Google Scholar]
http://instance.metastore.ingenta.com/content/journals/10.1075/bjl.30.10rad
Loading
/content/journals/10.1075/bjl.30.10rad
Loading

Data & Media loading...

  • Article Type: Research Article
This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was successful
Invalid data
An Error Occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error