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Language, Games, and Evolution pp 160–176Cite as

Signaling Games

Dynamics of Evolution and Learning

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 6207))

Introduction

“Let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech” (Genesis 11:1). The state of language confusion described in this passage may be understood as a state of maximal heterogeneity: every possible language is present in a population. It may also be viewed as a state of homogeneity, however; presumably, each possible language is spoken by a very small number of persons, inducing a uniform distribution over the set of languages. Should we expect individuals to stay at such a symmetric state? Or will they rather agree on one language, thereby breaking the symmetry of initial confusion (Skyrms, 1996)?

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research, Germany

    Simon M. Huttegger

  2. Department of Philosophy, Carnegie Mellon University, USA

    Kevin J. S. Zollman

Authors
  1. Simon M. Huttegger
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  2. Kevin J. S. Zollman
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Schützenstr. 18, 10117, Berlin, Germany

    Anton Benz

  2. Department of Linguistics, University of Tuebingen, Wilhelmstrasse 19, 72074, Tuebingen, Germany

    Christian Ebert  & Gerhard Jäger  & 

  3. Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC), University of Amsterdam, Oude Turfmarkt 141-147, 1012 GC, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Robert van Rooij

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Huttegger, S.M., Zollman, K.J.S. (2011). Signaling Games. In: Benz, A., Ebert, C., Jäger, G., van Rooij, R. (eds) Language, Games, and Evolution. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 6207. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-18006-4_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-18006-4_8

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-18005-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-18006-4

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