Nowak and Krakauer (1999) apply evolutionary game theory (EGT) to the development of a proto-language: “The evolution of language“.

The necessary components of an evolutionary game theory model (selection, variation, and replication) have linguistic analogs:

Selection: the process of acquiring new linguistic constructs, usually based on the tension between accurate, facile communication on the one hand and the minimization of complexity and ambiguity on the other.

Variation: linguistic creativity, reanalysis, or contact with other languages and dialects.

Replication: imitator rather than genetic replicator dynamics - offspring learn language techniques not from random adults but from parents.

Of course, there exists the assumption that successful communication (hearer recovers the intended meaning from speakers’ message) directly influences biological fitness.

The researchers’ investigation reveals three broad steps:

(1) Partners use rudimentary signals (such as a simple vowel-like sound) for each concept communicated. As the number of concepts increases, it becomes difficult for the hearer to correctly identify the signal the speaker is sending.

(2) The number of signals therefore reaches a limit; to achieve a greater lexicon, the signals are joined together into short sequences or words.

(3) Eventually, it becomes impossible to remember enough words to describe all actors, events, places, and more; rather than have a word to represent every event (such as ‘dogbitboy’), compositional syntax develops. Each word describes a part of an event, and each word can be used in combination with others to describe innumerable and complex events (’dog bit boy’).

EGT as applied to language development in this way can be applied to innumerable models. Consider, as a trivial example, that young people are in a perpetual state of self-evolution, constantly struggling to survive as members of one in-group or another. They reinvent themselves constantly, evolving, as it were, from day to day. The ability of a middle school pre-teen to acquire the particular linguistic forms (IM-speak, for example) selected for by the cliques, and to innovate new ‘cool’ wordplays give her a tremendous advantage, a much-improved biological fitness. Mastery of these forms will result in consistent social status stabilized social networks (evolutionary stability).