Abstract

This paper proposes a coevolutionary scenario on the origins of compositionality and word order regularity in human language, and illustrates it using a multi-agent, behavioral model. The model traces a ‘bottom-up’ process of syntactic development; artificial agents, by iterating local orders among lexical items, gradually build up basic constituent word order in sentences. These results show that structural features of language could have coevolved with lexical items, as a consequence of general learning mechanisms initially not language-specific. Keywords: Computer simulation; language origin; coevolution; compositionality; word order regularity