Date: Tue, 14 Jan 1997 23:12:42 GMT
Server: Apache/1.0.3
Content-type: text/html
Content-length: 948
Last-modified: Wed, 20 Mar 1996 17:44:27 GMT
Newkirk
Evolutionary Dialogs: From signals to sentences in a genetic model of
communication
Jim Newkirk
Computer Science Department
Signals are a simple and essential form of animal and human communication
alike, but sentences -- signals with structure -- are a distinguishing
feature of human speech alone. How signals can evolve into sentences is
the focus of a genetic model that I'll present in which discrete signals
are assembled, over the course of generations, into sequential structures
to communicate specific messages. Two notable and interdependent
conditions govern this development: an environment which is not constant,
but which changes in accordance with the development of the species; and
the preservation of ambiguity in communication, lending sentences the
flexibility to adapt to these shifts in environmental events.