Anaphoric Structures Emerge Between Neural Networks

Without explicit efficiency pressures.

This paper appeared at the International Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society in 2023.

Anaphors are ubiquitous in human language; structures like pronouns and ellipsis are present in virtually every language. This is in spite of the fact that they seem to introduce ambiguity – “they left a parcel for you” could refer to virtually anyone, and needs to be disambiguated by context. Many accounts of why anaphors exist are tied to efficiency: they enable brevity which lowers the effort of communicating. We show that anaphoric structures emerge between communicating neural networks whether or not there’s any pressure for efficiency, with efficiency pressures increasing the prevalence of anaphoric structures already present. Pointing to the relationship between semantics and pragmatics – rather than efficency – as a major causal factor.