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Languages combine arbitrary and iconic signals. How do
iconic signals emerge and when do they persist? We present
an experimental study of the role of iconicity in the
emergence of structure in an artificial language. Using an
iterated communication game in which we control the
signalling medium as well as the meaning space, we study the
evolution of communicative signals in transmission chains.
This sheds light on how affordances of the communication
medium shape and constrain the mappability and
transmissibility of form-meaning pairs. We find that iconic
signals can form the building blocks for wider compositional
patterns.
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