Bridging semantics and pragmatics in information-theoretic emergent communication

Abstract

Human languages support both semantic categorization and local pragmatic interactions that require context-sensitive reasoning about meaning. While semantics and pragmatics are two fundamental aspects of language, they are typically studied independently and their co-evolution is largely under-explored. Here, we aim to bridge this gap by studying how a shared lexicon may emerge from local pragmatic interactions. To this end, we extend a recent information-theoretic framework for emergent communication in artificial agents, which integrates utility maximization, associated with pragmatics, with general communicative constraints that are believed to shape human semantic systems. Specifically, we show how to adapt this framework to train agents via unsupervised pragmatic interactions, and then evaluate their emergent lexical semantics. We test this approach in a rich visual domain of naturalistic images, and find that key human-like properties of the lexicon emerge when agents are guided by both context-specific utility and general communicative pressures, suggesting that both aspects are crucial for understanding how language may evolve in humans and in artificial agents.