orion
04-08-2005, 09:55 PM
Least effort and the origins of scaling in human language (http://complex.upf.es/~ricard/LEASTPNAS.pdf)
Excellent advanced paper from Ferrer and Sole. The authors write.
"The emergence of a complex language is one of the fundamental
events of human evolution, and several remarkable features suggest
the presence of fundamental principles of organization. These
principles seem to be common to all languages. The best known is
the so-called Zipf’s law, which states that the frequency of a word
decays as a (universal) power law of its rank. The possible origins
of this law have been controversial, and its meaningfulness is still
an open question."
"In this article, the early hypothesis of Zipf of a
principle of least effort for explaining the law is shown to be
sound. Simultaneous minimization in the effort of both hearer and
speaker is formalized with a simple optimization process operating
on a binary matrix of signal–object associations. Zipf’s law is found
in the transition between referentially useless systems and indexical
reference systems. Our finding strongly suggests that Zipf’s law
is a hallmark of symbolic reference and not a meaningless feature.
The implications for the evolution of language are discussed. We
explain how language evolution can take advantage of a communicative
phase transition."
The GROUP FOR LOGIC AND FORMAL SEMANTICS (http://www.sunysb.edu/philosophy/glfs/grouprpts.html) have a collection of research work on the connection between fractals, semantics and the evolution of language and meaning in general.
To find on the Web these articles, simply copy a title, double qoute them in Google and try to find the versions. Most are PDF files.
Orion
Excellent advanced paper from Ferrer and Sole. The authors write.
"The emergence of a complex language is one of the fundamental
events of human evolution, and several remarkable features suggest
the presence of fundamental principles of organization. These
principles seem to be common to all languages. The best known is
the so-called Zipf’s law, which states that the frequency of a word
decays as a (universal) power law of its rank. The possible origins
of this law have been controversial, and its meaningfulness is still
an open question."
"In this article, the early hypothesis of Zipf of a
principle of least effort for explaining the law is shown to be
sound. Simultaneous minimization in the effort of both hearer and
speaker is formalized with a simple optimization process operating
on a binary matrix of signal–object associations. Zipf’s law is found
in the transition between referentially useless systems and indexical
reference systems. Our finding strongly suggests that Zipf’s law
is a hallmark of symbolic reference and not a meaningless feature.
The implications for the evolution of language are discussed. We
explain how language evolution can take advantage of a communicative
phase transition."
The GROUP FOR LOGIC AND FORMAL SEMANTICS (http://www.sunysb.edu/philosophy/glfs/grouprpts.html) have a collection of research work on the connection between fractals, semantics and the evolution of language and meaning in general.
To find on the Web these articles, simply copy a title, double qoute them in Google and try to find the versions. Most are PDF files.
Orion