Multi-Agent Interaction in the Emergence of Language and the Symbolosphere

    As Terrence Deacon points out, there was a point in hominid evolution when an ape brain capable of indexical reference developed the ability for symbolic reference.  In other words, communicative reference was extended from signs that referred to the things to signs that referred to other signs, words, concepts, and ideas.  With this change we became a symbolic species, and the evolution of an another realm of existence, the symbolosphere, began.
    This paper will describe the evolutionary emergence of the symbolosphere from the perspective of complexity theory.  We postulate a hominid group capable of making particulate sounds and concatenating the sounds into words.  When a lexicon of about 600 words was developed, verbal interaction with these words among the hominid speakers would lead to an emergent structure called grammar.  The grammar would not be a product of any specialized neural structure; instead, it would be a cultural artifact emergent from the massive interaction among the hominids in order to communicate, in consistent ways, an infinite variety of meanings.  Innovative forms would be proffered by members of the group, and if they were efficiently producible, efficiently understandable and efficiently learnable by children, then the particular grammatical form would be accepted and would constitute an element of the group's language.  The language would be constantly modified in this interaction to be compatible with human brains, and the brains would not have to change to accommodate the language.  This symbolic system could then refer to the past, the unrealized future, and, of course, the present.  The past and the future would not be constrained by indexical reference to existing objects and phenomena and thus would constitute an emergent virtual world made up of infinite webs of symbolic relationships.
    Amplification and expansion of this symbolosphere continued with the invention of print technology, message transfer technology (smoke signals, telegraph, Morse Code etc.), voice transmission technology (telephone, radio, television) and now computer technology  These processes have a produced a symbolic semiosphere, the symbolosphere, in which we live and which effects us as powerfully as does the biosphere.


John H. Schumann
University of California in Los Angeles
Department of Applied Linguistics
schumann@humnet.ucla.edu