The Evolution of Grounded Spatial Language
This thesis contributes to our understanding of the origins of spatial language by carrying out language game experiments with artificial agents instantiated as humanoid robots. It tests the theory of language evolution by linguistic selection, which states that language emerges through a cultural process based on the recruitment of various cognitive capacities in the service […]
Syntactic indeterminacy and semantic ambiguity – A case study for German spatial phrases
This chapter presents an operational grammar for German spatial language, in particular German locative phrases, as a case study for processing distributed information. It investigates the complex interplay of syntactic phenomena and spatial semantics, with a specific emphasis on efficient processing of syntactic indeterminacy and semantic ambiguity. Since FCG applies constructions in a sequence one […]
FAMOUS, faster: using parallel computing techniques to accelerate the FAMOUS/HadCM3 climate model with a focus on the radiative transfer algorithm
A First Encounter with Fluid Construction Grammar
Introducing Fluid Construction Grammar
Why We Need Evolutionary Semantics
One of the key components for achieving flexible, robust, adaptive and open-ended language-based communication between humans and robots – or between robots and robots – is rich deep semantics. AI has a long tradition of work in the representation of knowledge, most of it within the logical tradition. This tradition assumes that an autonomous agent […]
How to Make Construction Grammars Fluid and Robust
Natural languages are fluid. New conventions may arise and there is never absolute consensus in a population. How can human language users nevertheless have such a high rate of communicative success? And how do they deal with the incomplete sentences, false starts, errors and noise that is common in normal discourse? Fluidity, ungrammaticality and error […]
Feature Matrices and Agreement: A Case Study for German Case
This paper illustrates the use of ?feature matrices?, a technique for handling ambiguity and feature indeterminacy in feature structure grammars using unification as the single mechanism for processing. Both phenomena involve forms that can be mapped onto multiple, often conflicting values. This paper illustrates their respective challenges through German case agreement, which has become the […]
A Design Pattern for Argument Structure Constructions
This paper presents a design pattern for handling argument structure and offers a concrete operationalization of this pattern in Fluid Construction Grammar. Argument structure concerns the mapping between ?participant structure? (who did what to whom) and instances of ?argument realization? (the linguistic expression of participant structures). This mapping is multilayered and indirect, which poses great […]
Can Iterated Learning Explain the Emergence of Case Marking in Language?
This paper compares two prominent approaches in artificial language evolution: Iterated Learning and Social Coordination. More specifically, the paper contrasts experiments in both approaches on how populations of artificial agents can autonomously develop a grammatical case marking system for indicating event structure (i.e. ?who does what to whom?). The comparison demonstrates that only the Social […]