Signaling games and the evolution of structure in language and music: A reply to Ravignani & Verhoef (2018)

Massimo Lumaca, G. Baggio

Research output: Contribution to journal/Conference contribution in journal/Contribution to newspaperComment/debate/letter to the editorResearchpeer-review

6 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

In their commentary on our work, Ravignani and Verhoef (2018) raise concerns about two methodological aspects of our experimental paradigm (the signaling game): (1) the use of melodic signals of fixed length and duration, and (2) the fact that signals are endowed with meaning. They argue that music is hardly a semantic system and that our methodological choices may limit the capacity of our paradigm to shed light on the emergence and evolution of a number of putative musical universals. We reply that musical systems are semantic systems and that the aim of our research is not to study musical universals as such, but to compare more closely the kinds of principles that organize meaning and structure in linguistic and musical systems.

Original languageEnglish
JournalArtificial Life
Volume24
Issue2
Pages (from-to)154
Number of pages156
ISSN1064-5462
Publication statusPublished - 1 May 2018

Keywords

  • Cultural transmission
  • Evolution of language
  • Evolution of music
  • Iterated learning
  • Signaling games
  • Universals

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