Co-Acquisition of Syntax and Semantics — An Investigation in Spatial Language

This paper reports recent progress on modeling the grounded co-acquisition of syntax and semantics of locative spatial language in developmental robots. Weshow how a learner robot can learn to produce and interpret spatial utterances in guided-learning interactions with a tutor robot (equipped with a system for producing English spatial phrases). The tutor guides the learning process by simplifying the challenges and complexity of utterances, givesfeedback, and gradually increases the complexity of the language to be learnt. Our experiments show promising results towards long-term, incremental acquisition of natural language in a process of co-development of syntax and semantics.