2007/03/15 by Andrea Puglisi, Andrea Baronchelli, Vittorio Loreto · 8 citations
Computer Science · Physics and Astronomy · Psychology · Social Sciences · #Categorization, perception, and language #Language and cultural evolution #cond-mat.dis-nn #cs.MA #physics.soc-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1073/pnas.0802485105
published as Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 105, 7936 (2008) · 14 pages, 4 figures
arxiv created 2007/03/15 · openalex publication_date 2008/06/03 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Categories provide a coarse-grained description of the world. A fundamental question is whether categories simply mirror an underlying structure of nature or instead come from the complex interactions of human beings among themselves and with the environment. Here, we address this question by modeling a population of individuals who co-evolve their own system of symbols and meanings by playing elementary language games. The central result is the emergence of a hierarchical category structure made of two distinct levels: a basic layer, responsible for fine discrimination of the environment, and a shared linguistic layer that groups together perceptions to guarantee communicative success. Remarkably, the number of linguistic categories turns out to be finite and small, as observed in natural languages.