Language structure: psychological and social constraints (Q2460193): Difference between revisions

The authors discuss the notion of a linguistic universal, and possible sources of such invariant properties of natural languages. Focusing on conceptual issues that arise as well as the explanatory potential of horizontal evolution, the authors draw connections to evolutionary game theory. In particular a signaling game is set up, in which every Nash equilibrium amounts to a Voronoi tessellation of the meaning space.