COMMUNICATION, COOPERATION AND COHERENCE PUTTING MATHEMATICAL MODELS INTO PERSPECTIVE

摘要

Evolutionary game theory and related mathematical models from evolution-ary biology are increasingly seen as providing the mathematical framework formodeling the evolution of language (Van Rooij et al., 2005). Two crucial, generalresults from this field are (i) that altruistic communication is, in general, evolu-tionary unstable (Maynard Smith, 1982), and (ii) that there is a minimum valueon the accuracy of genetic or cultural transmission to allow linguistic coherencein a population (Nowak et al., 2001). Both results appear to pose formidable ob-stacles for convincing scenarios of the evolution of language. Because languageand communication did obviously evolve, finding solutions for both problems is akey challenge for theorists.