Developing Language Structure in the Lab

In recent years there has been a growing interest in recreating experimentally the conditions for the emergence of language and in particular of (proto)grammatical structures (Galantucci 2005; Garrod et al. 2007; Selten & Warglien 2007; Kirby et al. 2008). I this talk I summarize recent results in this research area and discuss more in detail my experimental work with R. Selten (PNAS 2007) and its implications, in particular concerning language compositionality and its adaptive value. I also shortly discuss a new experimental strategy that promises to deliver laboratory languages which are ecologically more valid and closer to natural language.