THREE ISSUES IN MODELING THE LANGUAGE CONVERGE NCE PROBLEM AS A MULTIAGENT AGREEMENT PROBLEM

摘要

A language is useless unless it is shared. Individuals and subgroup smodify languages by adding new words, creating new grammatical constructions,etc., and propagating these changes through contact. To maintain communica-bility over time, the population as a whole must converge (possibly within somesmall diversity limit) to agreement on a "common" language.