i Cancho Ramon Ferrer, Riordan Oliver, Bollobás Béla
ICREA-Complex Systems Laboratory, IMIM-UPF, Dr Aiguader 80, 08003 Barcelona, Spain.
Proc Biol Sci. 2005 Mar 7;272(1562):561-5. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2004.2957.
Although many species possess rudimentary communication systems, humans seem to be unique with regard to making use of syntax and symbolic reference. Recent approaches to the evolution of language formalize why syntax is selectively advantageous compared with isolated signal communication systems, but do not explain how signals naturally combine. Even more recent work has shown that if a communication system maximizes communicative efficiency while minimizing the cost of communication, or if a communication system constrains ambiguity in a non-trivial way while a certain entropy is maximized, signal frequencies will be distributed according to Zipf's law. Here we show that such communication principles give rise not only to signals that have many traits in common with the linking words in real human languages, but also to a rudimentary sort of syntax and symbolic reference.
尽管许多物种拥有基本的通信系统，但人类在使用句法和符号指代方面似乎是独一无二的。最近关于语言进化的研究方法，从形式上解释了与孤立信号通信系统相比，句法为何具有选择性优势，但没有解释信号是如何自然组合的。甚至最近的研究表明，如果一个通信系统在使通信成本最小化的同时使通信效率最大化，或者如果一个通信系统以一种非平凡的方式限制模糊性，同时使某种熵最大化，那么信号频率将根据齐普夫定律分布。在这里，我们表明，这样的通信原则不仅产生了许多与人类真实语言中的连接词有共同特征的信号，而且还产生了一种基本的句法和符号指代。
