A Shift from Material to Informational Aspects of Shared Resources can Promote Language Evolution

We aim to investigate how a shift from material to informational aspects of shared resources can promote language evolution using a computer simulation. We focus on the two levels of coevolution: that of biological and cultural evolution, and that of two aspects of linguistic abilities (cognitive and communicative). We also extend our integrated model of gene-culture coevolution of language mainly by incorporating the resource finiteness (e.g., high: limited food resources; low: replicable beneficial information). The experiments show that a decrease in the resource finiteness could promote the language evolution while decreasing their linguistic diversity in terms of their characteristic variation.

Automated summary

Computer simulations show that decreasing the finiteness of resources can promote language evolution while also decreasing linguistic diversity in terms of characteristic variation.