Modeling the emergence of a new language: Naming Game with hybridization

In recent times, the research field of language dynamics has focused on the investigation of language evolution, dividing the work in three evolutive steps, according to the level of complexity: lexicon, categories and grammar. The Naming Game is a simple model capable of accounting for the emergence of a lexicon, intended as the set of words through which objects are named. We introduce a stochastic modification of the Naming Game model with the aim of characterizing the emergence of a new language as the result of the interaction of agents. We fix the initial phase by splitting the population in two sets speaking either language A or B. Whenever the result of the interaction of two individuals results in an agent able to speak both A and B, we introduce a finite probability that this state turns into a new idiom C, so to mimic a sort of hybridization process. We study the system in the space of parameters defining the interaction, and show that the proposed model displays a rich variety of behaviours, despite the simple mean field topology of interactions.Comment: 12 pages, 10 figures, presented at IWSOS 2013 Palma de Mallorca, the final publication will be available at LNCS http://www.springer.com/lnc

The FORLI.OLB package for list processing in fortran IV

The paper discusses a number of functions and subroutines which all deal with list processing and are written in the programming language FORTRAN IV. After a brief introduction to the concept of list structures, a user's manual is given.Peer reviewe

A case study in the behavior-oriented design of autonomous agents

Trabajo presentado a la 3rd International Conference on Simulation of Adaptive Behavior (SAB), celebrada en Brighton (Inglaterra) del 8 al 12 de 1994.The paper documents a case study in the design and implementation of a robotic multi-agent system. It illustrates known design guidelines, namely that the physics of the environment must be exploited, that behavior is the result from the interaction dynamics between the agent and the environment, and that emergent behavior can and must be utilised whenever possible. But the case study also challenges certain views, such as the subsumption architecture, the need for an action selection mechanism, the goal-oriented design methodology dominating the literature on planning, and the algorithmic style of writing control programs. Alternatives are explored in the form of a cooperative, parallel, behavior-oriented design.Research has been funded by the ESPRIT basic research project SUBSYM particularly some of the early hardware development, and by the Belgian Government IUAP Centre of Excellence grant to the VUB AI lab.N

The biology and technology of intelligent autonomous agents

Guest editorial.We thank Dr. L. Veiga da Cunha, director of the NATO ASI program for the support throughout the whole administrative process associated with the Nato funding. This funding is hereby gratefully acknowledged.Peer Reviewe

Social learning and verbal communication with humanoid robots

Trabajo presentado a la IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots, celebrada en New York (US) en 2001.The paper discusses issues in the design of openended and grounded communication with humanoid robots. A number of design principles and design maxims are proposed. The key idea of the paper is that social learning can play a crucial role in bootstrapping a humanoid robot into lnguistic culture.N

Is symbolic inheritance similar to genetic inheritance?

Jablonka & Lamb's (J&L's) book is refreshing in that it debunks the exclusively gene-centered approach used these days to explain almost anything about life and human behavior. The book is very accessible and most convincing when the authors discuss biological theories of genetic and epigenetic inheritance, but it does not shy away from the more slippery terrain of behavioral and symbolic inheritance, and specifically the origins of language. But is the analogy appropriate?Peer Reviewe

The synthetic modeling of language origins

This paper surveys work on the computational modeling of the origins and evolution of language. The main approaches are described and some example experiments from the domains of the evolution of communication, phonetics, lexicon formation, and syntax are discussed.The writing of this paper was sponsored by the Sony Computer Science Laboratory in Paris.Peer reviewe

The XPRT Description System

This report describes research done at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The author was sponsored by the Institute of International Education on an ITT-fellowship.This paper introduces a frame-based description language and studies methods for reasoning about problems using knowledge expressed in the language. The system is based on the metaphor of a society of communicating experts and incorporates within this framework most of the currently known AI techniques, such as pattern-directed invocation, explicit control of reasoning, propagation of constraints, dependency recording, context mechanisms, message passing, conflict resolution, default reasoning, etc.MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Institute of International Educatio