Modeling the formation of language: Embodied experiments

This chapter gives an overview of different experiments that have been performed to demonstrate how a symbolic communication system, including its underlying ontology, can arise in situated embodied interactions between autonomous agents. It gives some details of the Grounded Naming Game, which focuses on the formation of a system of proper names, the Spatial Language Game, which focuses on the formation of a lexicon for expressing spatial relations as well as perspective reversal, and an Event Description Game, which concerns the expression of the role of participants in events through an emergent case grammar. For each experiment, details are provided how the symbolic system emerges, how the interaction is grounded in the world through the embodiment of the agent and its sensori-motor processing, and how concepts are formed in tight interaction with the emerging language.