We’re having a special LEC talk tomorrow (Monday) at 2.00-3.30 in 1.17
DSB from Amy Perfors who is visiting for the day:

Language evolution is shaped by the structure of the world: An
iterated learning analysis

Human languages vary in many ways, but also show striking
cross-linguistic universals. Why do these universals exist? Recent
theoretical results demonstrate that Bayesian learners transmitting
language to each other through iterated learning will converge on a
distribution of languages that depends only on their prior biases
about language and the quantity of data transmitted at each point;
the structure of the world being communicated about plays no role
(Griffiths & Kalish, 2005, 2007). In this talk I will revisit these
findings and show that when certain assumptions about the
independence of languages and the world are abandoned, learners will
converge to languages that depend on the structure of the world as
well as their prior biases. These theoretical results are supported
with a series of experiments showing that when human learners acquire
language through iterated learning, the ultimate structure of those
languages is shaped by the structure of the meanings to be
communicated.

See you there!

Simon

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