Abstract
In this paper, we propose an agent-based model for investigating possible scenarios of genetic and cultural language evolution based on an integrated gene-culture coevolutionary framework. We focused on the following problems: (1) how communicative ability can evolve directionally under positive frequency-dependent selection and (2) how much of the directional effect there is between language and biological evolution. In our evolutionary experiments and analysis, we discovered a coevolutionary scenario involving the biological evolution of phenotypic plasticity and a cyclic coevolutionary dynamic between genetic and cultural evolution that is mediated by phenotypic plasticity. Furthermore, we discovered that the rates of cultural change are usually faster than the biological rates and fluctuate on a short time scale; on a long time scale, however, cultural rates tend to be slow. This implies that biological evolution can maintain the pace with language evolution. Finally, we analyzed the transfer entropy for a quantitative discussion of the directional effects between both evolutions. The results showed that biological evolution appears to be unable to maintain the pace with language evolution on short time scales, while their mutual directional effects are in the same range on long time scales. This implies that language and the relevant biology could coevolve.
Highlights
The possession of language distinguishes humans from other animals
We focused on two fundamental problems concerning language evolution: how communicative ability can evolve directionally under frequency-dependent selection and whether the cultural evolution of language and biological evolution of traits underlying communicative interactions can coevolve
In addition to biological evolution and cultural evolution, we considered individual learning based on phenotypic plasticity as a third adaptive system, which was assumed to play a key role in considering the two fundamental problems that were the focus of this study
Summary
Phenotypic plasticity pj pi agent i language xy agent j ai lx ly aj linguistic space. The fitness of each agent is determined by summing the expressiveness of the languages used in its successful communication with others and the cost of the linguistic plasticity. This reflects a situation in which a greater innate ability makes it more costly to maintain the learning ability (e.g., the cost for maintaining the larger brain size) Overall, this definition of the fitness means that agents who can communicate with more other agents by using more expressive languages that are acquired with less linguistic plasticity will have higher fitness. We define a cultural change in languages as a change in the position of the language in the linguistic space due to the use of the language during successful communication among agents. This paper proposed a more simplified model to focus more on evolutionary rates of biological and cultural processes and their directional effects, using transfer entropy
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