From: Arnaud Fournet
Message: 61879
Date: 2008-12-04
----- Original Message -----
From: "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2008 9:14 PM
Subject: Re: [tied] Negation
>
> On 2008-12-04 20:43, Arnaud Fournet wrote:
>
>> What acts as "selection" in that model ?
>
> Let's suppose that we treat words as replicators. Any word can have
> slightly different realisations ("alleles"), some of which replicate
> with more success than others (i.e. their relative frequency increases
> in the course time). Any factor responsible for this differential
> survival of variants counts as a selective pressure. For example,
> analogy may work like that (a word-form consistent with the rest of its
> paradigm is "fitter" than an irregular one in terms of learnability).
> Even orthography may have a selective effect in a literate community
> (favouring spelling-pronunciations like "of[t]en"). In fact, there are
> lots of such factors, both language-internal and external.
>
> Piotr
>
============
What is this model capable of predicting what is not already known by other
means ?
A.