Towards a mechanistic understanding of the emergence, evolution, acquisition and processing of human-like languages in populations of autonomous agents

Project Details

Description

The overall mission of the research programme that I propose is to gain a deep and precise understanding of the computational mechanisms underlying the emergence, evolution, acquisition and processing of human-like languages in populations of autonomous agents. Unravelling and computationally modelling these mechanisms will not only contribute to a better understanding of how human languages function, but will also allow us to equip truly intelligent autonomous agents with the necessary means to co-construct conceptual and linguistic structures that are adequate for interacting with humans and each other in their native environment. This research programme is fundamental, yet applicable in nature. While it investigates fun- damental questions about the origins, evolution, acquisition and processing of human communication and language, the results of the experiments are directly relevant to a variety of real-world applications that tackle important industrial and societal challenges. Examples of such applications include intelligent conversational agents, collaborative robots, human-centric opinion observatories and facilitators, intelligent tutoring systems, and adaptive self-organising multi-agent systems.
AcronymOZR4048
StatusActive
Effective start/end date1/02/2331/01/27

Keywords

  • Emergent communication
  • computational linguistics
  • intelligent agents
  • artificial intelligence

Flemish discipline codes in use since 2023

  • Natural language processing
  • Evolutionary linguistics
  • Computational linguistics
  • Adaptive agents and intelligent robotics
  • Knowledge representation and reasoning

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  • Construction Grammar and Artificial Intelligence

    Beuls, K. & Van Eecke, P., 2025, The Cambridge Handbook of Construction Grammar. Fried, M. & Nikiforidou, K. (eds.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 543-571 28 p. ( Cambridge Handbooks in Language and Linguistics).

    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapterResearchpeer-review

    Open Access
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    78 Downloads (Pure)
  • The computational learning of construction grammars: State of the art and prospective roadmap

    Doumen, J., Schmalz, V. J., Beuls, K. & Van Eecke, P., 2025, In: Constructions and Frames. 17, 1, 34 p.

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    Open Access
    File
    16 Downloads (Pure)
  • A Benchmark for Recipe Understanding in Artificial Agents

    Nevens, J., De Haes, R., Ringe, R., Pomarlan, M., Porzel, R., Beuls, K. & Van Eecke, P., May 2024, Proceedings of the 2024 Joint International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC-COLING 2024). Calzolari, N., Kan, M-Y., Hoste, V., Lenci, A., Sakti, S. & Xue, N. (eds.). ELRA and ICCL, p. 22-42 21 p. (2024 Joint International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Language Resources and Evaluation, LREC-COLING 2024 - Main Conference Proceedings).

    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference paper

    Open Access
    File
    2 Citations (Scopus)
    29 Downloads (Pure)