The formation, generative power, and evolution of toponyms: Grounding a spatial vocabulary in a cognitive map," in The Evolution of Language

We present a series of studies investigating the formation, generative power, and evolution of toponyms (i.e. topographic names). The domain chosen for this project is the spatial concepts related to places in an environment, one of the key sets of concepts to be grounded in autonomous agents. Concepts for places cannot be directly perceived as they require knowledge of relationships between locations in space, with representations inferred from ambiguous sensory data acquired through exploration. A generative toponymic language game has been developed to allow the agents to interact, forming concepts for locations and spatial relations. The studies demonstrate how a grounded generative toponymic language can form and evolve in a population of agents interacting through language games. Initially, terms are grounded in simple spatial concepts directly experienced by the agents. A generative process then enables the agents to learn about and refer to locations beyond their direct experience, enabling concepts and toponyms to co-evolve. The significance of this research is the demonstration of grounding for both experienced and novel concepts, using a generative process, applied to spatial locations. 1