Abstract
In this paper I present a NetLogo simulation program which models human communication with indication of information source. The framework used is evolutionary game theory. Under different initial settings the individuals in the simulation either learn to systematically indicate their information source or not. I use several examples to show how this difference is connected to the impact of one’s speech behaviour on their reputation. In a community where this impact is high, the individuals who do not mark their information source lose reputation quickly and are ultimately excluded from the community. My hope is that this simulation program can help understand better the grammatical category evidentiality – the prototypical way of systematically indicating information source – and also shed some light on the question why this category developed in some languages and not in others.
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Notes
- 1.
For a clear distinction between the possible ways to indicate information source, see (Aikhenvald 2004, esp. Sect. 1.2.2).
- 2.
It could be viewed and downloaded from https://github.com/SlavaTodorova/InformationSourceSimulation.git.
- 3.
For the sake of simplicity, in this simulation all agents are assumed to be cooperative and benevolent. This means that there would be no liars in the community. Still, in order to bring the model closer to reality there will be a chance of misunderstanding, which will result in formulation and spread of false information.
- 4.
I am taking here a broad sence of the term’evolutionary game theory’, one which includes learning game theory. I do this following (Mühlenbernd 2011), as my work is closely based on his approach.
- 5.
Nature is a fictitious player in the game, whose actions are those choices that do not depend on either of the two actual players.
- 6.
The information sets (the sets of states between which a player cannot distinguish) are represented in the tree by dotted arcs.
- 7.
To give an example, in English the difference between these two kinds of messages would be the distinction between “It is raining” and “I see that it is raining.”
- 8.
The hearsay information is given to players by other players in a previous stage of the same game. However, the structure of the simulation is such that whether a player will get hearsay information, is decided together with the distribution of firsthand evidence – all the individuals who didn’t receive firsthand evidence, have to eventually be informed by others.
- 9.
Technically, the application of the hearer strategy takes place in the previous stage of the game, when Player 1 in this second branch has been Player 2 in the first branch. However I repeat this part of the game, as it is important to distinguish between the states that result from different outcomes in the previous stage.
- 10.
An example from English for the difference between a message of the basic type and a message of the hearsay type would be the same as between the sentences “It is raining” and “They say it is raining.”
- 11.
It is clear that in English a sentence of the form “They say it is raining” can be sincere even if the speaker is convinced it is not raining. Languages that do not use such embedding structures, but grammatical evidentiality also seem to allow for the sincere utterance of hearsay marked messages even when the speaker knows the information is false. For an example from Bulgarian, see (Smirnova 2011, p. 27) and for one from Quechua, see (Faller 2006, p. 4).
- 12.
I call local strategy the strategy to act in a particular way if the game has already evolved to the state in which the player has to move. Simply strategy will refer to a combination of local strategies and will tell us how the player would move at any point of the game.
- 13.
See (Wilensky 1999).
- 14.
The language has been developed for simulating the behaviour of a robotized turtle, hence the extravagant name of this basic kind of agents.
References
Aikhenvald, A.Y.: Evidentiality. Oxford University Press, Oxford (2004)
Faller, M.: Evidentiality and epistemic modality at the semantics/pragmatics interface (2006). https://www.academia.edu/25944467/Evidentiality_and_Epistemic_Modality_at_the_Semantics_Pragmatics_Interface
Mühlenbernd, R.: Learning with neighbours. Synthese S1(183), 87–109 (2011)
Smirnova, A.: The meaning of the Bulgarian evidential and why it cannot express inferences about the future. Proc. SALT 21, 275–294 (2011)
Wilensky, U.: NetLogo. Center for connected learning and computer-based modeling, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL (1999). http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/
Wilensky, U.: NetLogo Signaling Game model. Center for connected learning and computer-based modeling, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL (2016). http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/models/SignalingGame
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Dessislava Ivanova for bringing NetLogo to my attention, Hristo Todorov and Evgeni Latinov for their comments on a number of drafts of this paper, and the anonymous reviewers for their feedback and suggestions.
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Todorova, V. (2019). Playing with Information Source. In: Sikos, J., Pacuit, E. (eds) At the Intersection of Language, Logic, and Information. ESSLLI 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11667. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-59620-3_11
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