Traditional explanations for the presence of ambiguous words in natural language have focused on the cost of added complexity that would accompany unambiguous languages. In these theories, ambiguity arises because it represents the optimal trade-off between the informational benefits from precision and the costs for rich languages. In this paper, we suggest that ambiguity remains an inevitable feature of learning languages even without complexity costs. We show that ambiguous words occur more frequently and will therefore be learned more readily, thus (...) triggering more semantic activations between senses of the ambiguous word. We illustrate this through a game-theoretical example. (shrink)

In a recent article, Carlos Santana shows that in common interest signaling games when signals are costly and when receivers can observe contextual environmental cues, ambiguous signaling strategies outperform precise ones and can, as a result, evolve. I show that if one assumes a realistic structure on the state space of a common interest signaling game, ambiguous strategies can be explained without appeal to contextual cues. I conclude by arguing that there are multiple types of cases of payoff-beneficial ambiguity, some (...) of which are better explained by Santana’s models and some of which are better explained by models presented here. (shrink)

In a recent article, Carlos Santana shows that in common interest signaling games when signals are costly and when receivers can observe contextual environmental cues, ambiguous signaling strategies outperform precise ones and can, as a result, evolve. I show that if one assumes a realistic structure on the state space of a common interest signaling game, ambiguous strategies can be explained without appeal to contextual cues. I conclude by arguing that there are multiple types of cases of payoff-beneficial ambiguity, some (...) of which are better explained by Santana’s models and some of which are better explained by models presented here. (shrink)

Cognitive Science, Volume 46, Issue 2, February 2022.

The amount of information conveyed by linguistic conventions depends on their precision, yet the codes that humans and other animals use to communicate are quite ambiguous: they may map several vague meanings to the same symbol. How does semantic precision evolve, and what are the constraints that limit it? We address this question using a multiplayer gaming app, where individuals communicate with one another in a scaled-up referential game. Here, the goal is for a sender to use black and white (...) symbols to communicate colors. We expected that the players’ mappings between symbols and colors would grow more specific over time, through a selection process whereby precise mappings are preferentially copied. We found that players become increasingly more precise in their use of symbols over the course of their interactions. This trend did not, however, result from selective copying of precise mappings. We explore the implications of this result for the study of lexical ambiguity, Zipf's Law of Meaning, and disagreements over semantic conventions. (shrink)

In Lewisean signaling games with common interests, perfect signaling strategies have been shown to be optimal in terms of communicative success and evolutionary fitness. However, in signaling game models that involve contextual cues, ambiguous signaling strategies can match up to or even outperform perfect signaling. For a minimalist example of such a context signaling game, I will show that three strategy types are expected to emerge under evolutionary dynamics: perfect signaling, partial ambiguity and full ambiguity. Moreover, I will show that (...) partial ambiguity strategies are the most expected outcome and have the greatest basin of attraction among these three types when sender and receiver costs are arbitrarily small or similar. I will demonstrate that the evolutionary success of partial ambiguity is due to being risk dominant, which points to a better compatibility with other strategy types. (shrink)

This paper applies the theoretical criteria laid out by D’Arms et al. to various aspects of evolutionary models of signalling. The question that D’Arms et al. seek to answer can be formulated as follows: Are the models that we use to explain the phenomena in question conceptually adequate? The conceptual adequacy question relates the formal aspects of the model to those aspects of the natural world that the model is supposed to capture. Moreover, this paper extends the analysis of D’Arms (...) et al. by asking the following additional question: Are the models that we use sufficient to explain the phenomena in question? The sufficiency question asks what formal resources are minimally required for the model to get the right results most of the time. (shrink)

Building on Wittgenstein’s ideas, I defend a brand of pluralism that associates words with conceptual families and appeals to this notion in the course of philosophical problem solving. I argue that certain problems that the received view of conceptual engineering (‘improvement by replacement’) faces can be more easily overcome if we adopt a pluralist perspective. I show that the proposed approach can circumvent the problem of topic discontinuity, whilst also avoiding the threat of trivialisation, since it can easily accommodate both (...) coarse-grained and fine-grained topics. Finally, I argue that my variant of pluralism is compatible with de novo conceptual engineering insofar as it allows that the paradigm associated with a word may shift overtime thus creating an opportunity for new candidate members to join a conceptual family. (shrink)

In this article, I propose an inquisitive approach to semantic underdetermination using the model of issue resolution to describe how occasion meanings are determined in the process of pragmatic enrichment. I appeal to “Travis cases” to motivate the account of semantic underdetermination based on alternative ways for some objectato be F. When interpreting a sentence, we look how to narrow down the space of metalinguistic alternatives and achieve the state where a metalinguistic issue is resolved. I suggest that, in doing (...) this, we primarily rely on contextual domain goals, preferring those alternatives which are conducive to the goal. (shrink)

Communication involves a great deal of uncertainty. Prima facie, it is therefore surprising that biological communication systems—from cellular to human—exhibit a high degree of ambiguity and often leave its resolution to contextual cues. This puzzle deepens once we consider that contextual information may diverge between individuals. In the following we lay out a model of ambiguous communication in iterated interactions between subjectively rational agents lacking a common contextual prior. We argue ambiguity’s justification to lie in endowing interlocutors with means to (...) flexibly adapt language use to each other and the context of their interaction to serve their communicative preferences. Linguistic alignment is shown to play an important role in this process; it foments convergence of contextual expectations and thereby leads to agreeing use and interpretation of ambiguous messages. We conclude that ambiguity is ecologically rational when interlocutors’ contextual expectations are generally in line or they interact multiple times in an informative context, enabling for the alignment of their expectations. In light of these results meaning multiplicity can be understood as an opportunistic outcome enabled and shaped by linguistic adaptation and contextual information. (shrink)

Communication involves a great deal of uncertainty. Prima facie, it is therefore surprising that biological communication systems—from cellular to human—exhibit a high degree of ambiguity and often leave its resolution to contextual cues. This puzzle deepens once we consider that contextual information may diverge between individuals. In the following we lay out a model of ambiguous communication in iterated interactions between subjectively rational agents lacking a common contextual prior. We argue ambiguity’s justification to lie in endowing interlocutors with means to (...) flexibly adapt language use to each other and the context of their interaction to serve their communicative preferences. Linguistic alignment is shown to play an important role in this process; it foments convergence of contextual expectations and thereby leads to agreeing use and interpretation of ambiguous messages. We conclude that ambiguity is ecologically rational when interlocutors’ contextual expectations are generally in line or they interact multiple times in an informative context, enabling for the alignment of their expectations. In light of these results meaning multiplicity can be understood as an opportunistic outcome enabled and shaped by linguistic adaptation and contextual information. 1Meaning Multiplicity in Communication 2Ambiguous Signalling through Pragmatic Inference 2.1Preliminaries 2.2Signalling behaviour 2.3Communicative success 2.4Iterated interactions 3Predictions for Single and Iterated Interactions 3.1Simulations 3.2Exploration and past experience 3.3Preemptive adaptation 4Discussion 5Conclusion Appendix. (shrink)