Structured meaning-signal mappings, i.e., mappings that preserve neighborhood relationships by associating similar signals with similar meanings, are advantageous in an environment where signals are corrupted by noise and sub-optimal meaning inferences are rewarded as well. The evolution of these mappings, however, cannot be explained within a traditional language evolutionary game scenario in which individuals meet randomly because the evolutionary dynamics is trapped in local maxima that do not reflect the structure of the meaning and signal spaces. Here we use a simple game theoretical model to show analytically that when individuals adopting the same communication code meet more frequently than individuals using different codes-a result of the spatial organization of the population-then advantageous linguistic innovations can spread and take over the population. In addition, we report results of simulations in which an individual can communicate only with its K nearest neighbors and show that the probability that the lineage of a mutant that uses a more efficient communication code becomes fixed decreases exponentially with increasing K. These findings support the mother tongue hypothesis that human language evolved as a communication system used among kin, especially between mothers and offspring.

中文翻译：

---

结构化通信代码演化的博弈论方法。

结构化意义信号映射，即通过将相似信号与相似意义相关联来保持邻域关系的映射，在信号被噪声破坏并且次优意义推断也得到奖励的环境中是有利的。然而，这些映射的演化无法在个体随机相遇的传统语言演化博弈场景中得到解释，因为演化动态被困在不反映意义和信号空间结构的局部最大值中。在这里，我们使用一个简单的博弈理论模型来分析表明，当采用相同通信代码的个体比使用不同代码的个体更频繁地相遇时——这是人口空间组织的结果——那么有利的语言创新可以传播并接管人口。此外，我们报告了模拟结果，其中一个人只能与其 K 个最近的邻居通信，并表明使用更有效通信代码的突变体的谱系变得固定的概率随着 K 的增加呈指数下降。这些发现支持母语假说认为人类语言进化为一种用于亲属之间的交流系统，尤其是母亲和后代之间。