Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Though most documented sign languages make use of spaceto denote relationships between predicate arguments, studiesof emerging sign languages suggest that spatial reference doesnot emerge fully-formed but takes time to develop. We presentan artificial sign language learning experiment that expandsthe cultural evolutionary framework to investigate complexlinguistic constructions. Our results demonstrate the gradualemergence of consistent devices to distinguish between sen-tence arguments, some of which rely on iconic spatial con-trasts. These findings mirror data from emerging sign lan-guages and point to the cultural mechanisms that facilitate theevolution of complex linguistic structures.