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November 18, 2005
Creating A New Language
What would happen if you were locked in a room with a bunch of strangers, not allowed to speak and all you had were four to sixteen symbols to work with? How would you all communicate?
To find out, Yale cognitive scientist Bruno Galantucci decided to run an experiment. He set up a computer game in which two people wander through a virtual space with several rooms - each marked with a geometric symbol on the ground. Neither can see the other, but they can communicate by drawing symbols on a rapidly scrolling chalkboard that each can see. To figure out where the other person is, they must develop a system of communication that is linked to the symbols on the ground, yet also which communicates complex concepts like relative position and direction someone is heading in.
Then he plopped a few subjects down to see what would happen. Nine out of ten pairs developed a communication system of three or four symbols and solved the puzzle in three hours. A more complex version of the puzzle was solved in six hours with sixteen symbols created. The interesting thing was, each language was different. You would think people would come up with the same solutions and conclusions.
The good doctor expected the pairs would build their language on elements on the icons that appeared on the floors of the rooms. A few did, but they extracted features of the icons - the number of vertices or some abstraction of the shape for example. Others adopted a numbering system for the rooms - such as slanting one line for the first room and two for the second. Another technique involved labeling the rooms by their relative position in space by placing marks on different parts of the screen.
So how do humans develop these language skills so fast? Intriguingly, communication was born as soon as one partner decided to copy another's symbols. There's something cognitively deep about the act of mimesis between two sentient beings. The one pair that didn't complete the game basically reduced themselves to the equivalent of screaming in frustration by scribbling all over chaotically.
Since this video game started as a study, I could image it extrapolated into a massively multiplayer game similar to World of Warcraft. What kind of language would 10,000 people online develop? How would language influence relationships, alliances and growth? What kind of languages will be the easiest to learn and spread rapidly and what kind will quickly die and be absorbed into others? If anyone can make this kind of game, it would be Nintendo, known for their passion to create games based on motives and ideas rather than just graphics. DO IT NINTENDO!
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