Computer Simulation of Language Evolution

This master thesis presents a computational approach to the problem of language evolution, the study of how language emerges from a situation in which there is no language. The model employed is inspired by the work done in Livingstone (2002) and Livingstone and Fyfe (1999). The structure of the thesis is as follows: Chapter 2 introduces the basic terminology and results of dialectology and language change. Chapter 3 gives an overview of the simulation model and the details of implementation. Chapter 4 provides an analysis of the model’s parameters and discusses the results observable for the ‘basic’ implementation. Chapter 5 describes the setup and outcomes of genuinely novel experiments; these include the study of the emergence of simple compositional grammars. Chapter 6 recapitulates the findings obtained and relates these to questions of general linguistic importance.

Level thesis:degree_level

master

Grantor dc:publisher

Universität Heidelberg

Author dc:creator

• Eger, Steffen

Repository record source_url

http://www.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/archiv/7255

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de:7255