Puglisi Andrea, Baronchelli Andrea, Loreto Vittorio
Istituto Nazionale per la Fisica della Materia-Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (SMC) and Dipartimento di Fisica, "Sapienza" Università di Roma, Piazzale A. Moro 2, 00185 Roma, Italy.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2008 Jun 10;105(23):7936-40. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0802485105. Epub 2008 Jun 3.
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.
类别提供了对世界的粗略描述。一个基本问题是，类别是仅仅反映自然的潜在结构，还是相反，来自人类自身之间以及与环境的复杂相互作用。在这里，我们通过对一群个体进行建模来解决这个问题，这些个体通过玩基本的语言游戏共同进化出他们自己的符号和意义系统。核心结果是出现了一个由两个不同层次组成的层次类别结构：一个基础层，负责对环境进行精细区分；一个共享语言层，将感知组合在一起以确保交流成功。值得注意的是，语言类别的数量被证明是有限且少的，正如在自然语言中所观察到的那样。
