Emergence of systematic iconicity: Transmission, interaction and analogy

Abstract

Languages combine arbitrary and iconic signals. How do\niconic signals emerge and when do they persist? We present\nan experimental study of the role of iconicity in the\nemergence of structure in an artificial language. Using an\niterated communication game in which we control the\nsignalling medium as well as the meaning space, we study the\nevolution of communicative signals in transmission chains.\nThis sheds light on how affordances of the communication\nmedium shape and constrain the mappability and\ntransmissibility of form-meaning pairs. We find that iconic\nsignals can form the building blocks for wider compositional\npatterns.