TY - JOUR AU - Lentz, Tom AU - Blutner, Reinhard PY - 2009/01/01 Y2 - 2024/03/29 TI - Signalling games: evolutionary convergence on optimality JF - ZAS Papers in Linguistics JA - Zaspil VL - 51 IS - SE - Artikel DO - 10.21248/zaspil.51.2009.375 UR - https://zaspil.leibniz-zas.de/article/view/375 SP - 95-110 AB - <pre class="preserve-spaces">Horn's division of pragmatic labour (Horn, 1984) is a universal property of language, and amounts to the pairing of simple meanings to simple forms, and deviant meanings to complex forms. This division makes sense, but a community of language users that do not know it makes sense will still develop it after a while, because it gives optimal communication at minimal costs. This property of the division of pragmatic labour is shown by formalising it and applying it to a simple form of signalling games, which allows computer simulations to corroborate intuitions. The division of pragmatic labour is a stable communicative strategy that a population of communicating agents will converge on, and it cannot be replaced by alternative strategies once it is in place.</pre><p>&nbsp;</p> ER -