Andrea Baronchelli et al J. Stat. Mech. (2006) P06014 doi:10.1088/1742-5468/2006/06/P06014
Andrea Baronchelli1, Maddalena Felici1, Vittorio Loreto1, Emanuele Caglioti2 and Luc Steels3,4
Show affiliationsWhat processes can explain how very large populations are able to converge on the use of a particular word or grammatical construction without global coordination? Answering this question helps to understand why new language constructs usually propagate along an S-shaped curve with a rather sudden transition towards global agreement. It also helps to analyse and design new technologies that support or orchestrate self-organizing communication systems, such as recent social tagging systems for the web. The article introduces and studies a microscopic model of communicating autonomous agents performing language games without any central control. We show that the system undergoes a disorder/order transition, going through a sharp symmetry breaking process to reach a shared set of conventions. Before the transition, the system builds up non-trivial scale-invariant correlations, for instance in the distribution of competing synonyms, which display a Zipf-like law. These correlations make the system ready for the transition towards shared conventions, which, observed on the timescale of collective behaviours, becomes sharper and sharper with system size. This surprising result not only explains why human language can scale up to very large populations but also suggests ways to optimize artificial semiotic dynamics.
02.50.Le Decision theory and game theory
Issue 06 (June 2006)
Received 26 May 2006, accepted for publication 30 May 2006
Published 23 June 2006
Andrea Baronchelli et al J. Stat. Mech. (2006) P06014
Danil Dobrynin et al 2009 New J. Phys. 11 115020
Huijie Hou et al 2009 J. Micromech. Microeng. 19 127001
S Hild et al 2010 Class. Quantum Grav. 27 015003
Jiangang Du et al 2009 J. Micromech. Microeng. 19 075008
A C Levi et al 2009 J. Phys.: Condens. Matter 21 225009
E Chung et al 2008 J. Phys.: Conf. Ser. 124 012018
Fereydoon Namavar et al 2007 Nanotechnology 18 415702
Chikashi Arita et al 2009 J. Phys. A: Math. Theor. 42 345002
Jaewon Park et al 2009 J. Micromech. Microeng. 19 065016