Language evolution might have preferred certain prior social configurations over others. Experiments conducted with models of different social structures (varying subgroup interactions and the presence of a dominant interlocutor) suggest that having isolated agent groups rather than an interconnected agent is more advantageous for the emergence of a social communication system. Accordingly, distinctive groups that are closely connected by communication yield systems less like natural language than fully isolated groups inhabiting the same world, while the addition of a dominant male who is asymmetrically favoured as a hearer, and equally likely to be a speaker has no positive influence on the quality of the emergent communal language.
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