Propositional logic syntax acquisition

Abstract

This paper addresses the problem of the acquisition of the syntax of prepositional logic. An approach based on general purpose cognitive capacities such as invention, adoption, parsing, generation and induction is proposed. Self-organisation principles are used to show how a shared set of preferred lexical entries and grammatical constructions, i.e., a language, can emerge in a population of autonomous agents which do not have any initial linguistic knowledge. Experiments in which a population of autonomous agents constructs a language that allows communicating the formulas of a prepositional language are presented. This language although simple has interesting properties found in natural languages, such as compositionality and recursion. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006.