The Evolution of Heterogeneous Naming Conventions

In the real world we observe a proliferation of regional dialects and jargons. Most of the research on naming conventions focuses on how to explain the process that allows a single naming convention to establish itself. This paper presents a different approach that aims to investigate why different conventions may emerge and coexist for a certain amount of time. The naming game is an abstraction of lexical acquisition dynamics, in which n agents try to find an agreement on the names to give to objects. To understand how different heterogeneous conventions emerge, I discuss a naming game model that takes into account experimental data on human and animal learning.