Evolutionary motivations for semantic universals

Most work in 'evolutionary linguistics' seeks to motivate the emergence of linguistic universals. Although the search for universals never played a major role in semantics, a number of such universals have been proposed concerning connectives, property and preposition denoting expressions, and quantifiers. In this paper we suggest some evolutionary motivations for these proposed universals using game theory.

[1]  Christina Pawlowitsch,et al.  Why evolution does not always lead to an optimal signaling system , 2008, Games Econ. Behav..

[2]  J. M. Smith,et al.  The Logic of Animal Conflict , 1973, Nature.

[3]  P. Taylor,et al.  Evolutionarily Stable Strategies and Game Dynamics , 1978 .

[4]  B. Skyrms.  The Stag Hunt and the Evolution of Social Structure , 2003 .

[5]  David R. Dowty,et al.  Word Meaning and Montague Grammar , 1979 .

[6]  James R. Hurford,et al.  Biological evolution of the Saussurean sign as a component of the language acquisition device , 1989 .

[7]  James H. Moor,et al.  Knowledge and the Flow of Information. , 1982 .

[8]  Bas C. van Fraassen,et al.  Meaning Relations among Predicates , 1967 .

[9]  Laurence R. Horn.  A Natural History of Negation , 1989 .

[10]  Joost Zwarts,et al.  Vectors as Relative Positions: A Compositional Semantics of Modified PPs1 , 1997, J. Semant..

[11]  P. C. Wason,et al.  The Processing of Positive and Negative Information , 1959 .

[12]  S. Peters,et al.  Word Vectors and Quantum Logic Experiments with negation and disjunction , 2003 .

[13]  M. Studdert-Kennedy,et al.  The evolutionary emergence of language : social function and the origins of linguistic form , 2000 .

[14]  David Lewis.  Convention: A Philosophical Study , 1986 .

[15]  Robert van Rooij,et al.  The Stag Hunt and the Evolution of Social Structure , 2007, Stud Logica.

[16]  Simon M. Huttegger.  Evolution and the Explanation of Meaning* , 2007, Philosophy of Science.

[17]  Dominic Widdows,et al.  Geometric Ordering of Concepts, Logical Disjunction, and Learning by Induction , 2004, AAAI Technical Report.

[18]  William P. Alston,et al.  Knowledge and the Flow of Information , 1985 .

[19]  Gerhard Jäger,et al.  Language structure: psychological and social constraints , 2007, Synthese.

[20]  Daniel Gil.  Aristotle Goes to Arizona, And Finds a Language without "And" , 1991 .

[21]  J. Hurford.  The Emergence of Syntax , 2000 .

[22]  T. Sebeok.  Coding in the evolution of signalling behavior , 2007 .

[23]  Robert van Rooy,et al.  SIGNALLING GAMES SELECT HORN STRATEGIES , 2004 .

[24]  N. Foo.  Conceptual Spaces—The Geometry of Thought , 2022 .

[25]  Ariel Rubinstein,et al.  WHY ARE CERTAIN PROPERTIES OF BINARY RELATIONS RELATIVELY MORE COMMON IN NATURAL LANGUAGE , 1996 .

[26]  Willem Zuidema,et al.  The major transitions in the evolution of language , 2005 .

[27]  Robert van Rooy,et al.  Evolution of Conventional Meaning and Conversational Principles , 2004, Synthese.

[28]  Simon Kirby,et al.  The Evolutionary Emergence of Language: Syntax Without Natural Selection: How Compositionality Emerges from Vocabulary in a Population of Learners , 2000 .

[29]  R. Kirk.  CONVENTION: A PHILOSOPHICAL STUDY , 1970 .

[30]  J M Smith,et al.  Evolution and the theory of games , 1976 .

[31]  Geoffrey K. Pullum,et al.  Truth Functional Connectives in Natural Language , 1976 .

[32]  M A Nowak,et al.  The evolutionary dynamics of grammar acquisition. , 2001, Journal of theoretical biology.

[33]  W. Strange.  Evolution of language. , 1984, JAMA.

[34]  K. Wärneryd.  Cheap Talk, Coordination, and Evolutionary Stability , 1993 .

[35]  S. Kirby.  The Evolution of Meaning-Space Structure through Iterated Learning , 2007 .

[36]  F. Lounsbury.  A Semantic Analysis of the Pawnee Kinship Usage , 1956 .

[37]  Gerhard Jäger,et al.  Evolutionary Game Theory and Linguistic Typology: a Case Study , 2003 .

[38]  C. Goddard.  Lexico-Semantic Universals: A Critical Overview , 2001 .

[39]  D. Bickerton.  The roots of language , 2016 .

[40]  Carl T. Bergstrom,et al.  The evolution of functionally referential meaning in a structured world. , 2007, Journal of theoretical biology.