Recent work in evolutionary linguistics has concentrated on the evolution of syntactic structure, explaining its emergence as a consequence of the recognition and coding of regularities between signals and meanings. The successful emergence of syntax in these simulations, however, is predicated on the pre-existence of a fixed, structured semantic representation, and on the explicit coupling of meanings and signals in the linguistic transfer. Language acquisition studies suggest, however, that feedback is not provided to language learners, meanings are not transferred, and conceptual structure is not innate, but is formed from an interaction between environmental experiences and the semantic structure of the particular language being learnt.

We investigate the interaction between the development of language and conceptual structure, using simulated populations of interacting agents, who build a conceptual model of the world around them through both direct experience of the world and, to a lesser extent, their communicative experiences. Agents develop individual, distinct representations of their environment, and a dynamic language develops in the population from the interactions between them. Although successful communication is possible when agents connect different meanings to the same word, overall communicative success appears to be related to the proportion of shared meaning structure in the population, suggesting an increased role for language in conceptual development.