Artificially growing a numeral system
James R. Hurford · 1999
This paper describes attempts to simulate the growth of natural language numeral systems by computational techniques. Similar techniques could in principle by used to model the growth of other subsystems of grammar, and a long-term aim of this strand of research is to model the evolution of many of the organizational features of language. There are two salient factors in favour of using numeral systems as a test bed for this approach, and one salient factor against. ffl In favour: 1. Numeral systems are relatively simple, 2. Numeral systems are relatively self-contained.