L.: The role of anticipation in the emergence of language

We review some of the main theories about how language emerged. We suggest that including the study of the emergence of artificial languages, in simulation settings, allows us to ask a more general question, namely, what are the minimal initial conditions for the emergence of language? This is a very important question from a technological viewpoint, because it is very closely tied to questions of intelligence and autonomy. We iden-tify anticipation as being a key underlying computational principle in the emergence of language. We suggest that this is in fact present implicitly in many of the theories in contention today. Focused simulations that address precise questions are necessary to isolate the roles of the minimal initial conditions for the emergence of language. 1 What is the problem of language emergence? It is very hard to imagine what life would be like without language. Before some point in our evolutionary history, however, our ancestors did not have language. How did language (and the capacity for it) evolve? This is the problem of language emergence. The emergence of language is considered to be the last major transition in evolution [1]. It is one of the clearest distinctions between humans and other animals, and speculations about the origins of language go back to Plato’s Craty-lus dialogue, which discusses the connection between names and things. What makes the subject particularly difficult is the lack of data about the earliest lan-guages. Despite this lack, the publication of Darwin’s works on evolution lead to a great deal of speculation on possible scenarios for the evolution of language. This led the Sociéte ́ de Linguistique de Paris, when it was formed in 1865, to declare in its bylaws that it would not accept any communications dealing with 1 the origin of language. A similar statement was made by the Philological Societ