It's About Time: Temporal References in Emergent Communication

Olaf Lipinski, Adam Sobey, Federico Cerutti, Timothy J. Norman

Primary Area: visualization or interpretation of learned representations

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Keywords: Emergent Communication, Emergent Language, Temporal Logic

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Abstract: As humans, we use linguistic elements referencing time, such as “before” or “tomorrow”, to easily share past experiences and future predictions. While temporal aspects of the language have been considered in computational linguistics, no such exploration has been done within the field of emergent communication. We research this gap, providing the first reported temporal vocabulary within emergent communication literature. Our experimental analysis shows that a different agent architecture is sufficient for the natural emergence of temporal references, and that no additional losses are necessary. Our readily transferable architectural insights provide the basis for the incorporation of temporal referencing into other emergent communication environments.

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Submission Number: 5303