The evolution of language can only be explained when we take a language learning process into account which is necessarily imperfect due to weak data and the limits of induction. Thus language change yields clues on what the learning processes are and conversely hypothesised learning processes should predict possible language changes. This paper considers this issue by studying lexicon formation processes. It is shown how a process for the cosntruction and acquisition of a lexicon in a single agent leads to various dynamical phenomena when applied to a population of agents with varying degrees of contact.

Trabajo presentado al ECML-97 Familiarization Workshop: "Empirical Learning of Natural Language Processing Tasks" celebrado en la República Checa el 26 de abril de 1997.

This work was financed and carried out at the Sony Computer Science Laboratory in Paris.

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