THE EMERGENCE OF PROPOSITIONS FROM THE COORDINATION OF TALK AND ACTION IN A SHARED WORLD

We present a connectionist model that demonstrates how propositional s tructure can emerge from the interactions among the members of a commu nity of simple cognitive agents. We first describe a process in which agents coordinating their actions and verbal productions with each oth er in a shared world leads to the development of propositional structu res. We then present a simulation model which implements this process for generating propositions from scratch. We report and discuss the be haviour of the model in terms of its ability to produce three properti es of propositions: (1) a coherent lexicon characterised by shared for m-meaning mappings; (2) conventional structure in the sequences of for ms; (3) the prediction of spatial facts. We show that these properties do not emerge when a single individual learns the task alone and conc lude that the properties emerge from the demands of the communication task rather than from anything inside the individual agents. We then s how that the shared structural principles can be described as a gramma r, and discuss the implications of this demonstration for theories con cerning the origins of the structure of language.