Organizer: Joel L. Lebowitz
lebowitz@math.rutgers.edu

• Speaker- N. Komarova, Rutgers University
• Time/Place- Thursday 1/29/04, 11:30am in Hill 705
• Title- Communicating agents in a shared world
• Abstract- We consider the problem of linguistic agents that communicate with each other about a shared world. We develop a formal notion of a language as a set of probabilistic associations between form (lexical or syntactic) and meaning (semantic) that has general applicability. Using this notion, we define a natural measure of the mutual intelligibility, F(L,L'), between two agents, one using the language L and the other using L'. A natural question is this: Given a language L, what language L' maximizes mutual intelligibility with L? We find surprisingly that L' need not be the same as L, and present algorithms for finding L'. Next, we consider a population of linguistic agents that learn from each other and evolve over time. Will the community converge to a shared language and what is the nature of such a language? We find Nash equilibria of this system, and discuss this analysis in relation with observations about synonyms and homonyms in natural languages.