Pragmatic Languages with Universal Grammars

Penelope Hernandez (), Amparo Urbano and Jose Vila ()

No 110, Discussion Papers in Economic Behaviour from University of Valencia, ERI-CES

Abstract: This paper shows the existence of an equilibrium pragmatic Language with a universal grammar as a coordination device under communication misunderstandings. Such a language plays a key role in achieving efficient outcomes in those Sender-Receiver games where there may exist noisy information transmission. The Language is pragmatic in the sense that the Receiver’ best response depends on the context, i.e, on the payoffs and on the initial probability distribution of the states of nature of the underlying game. The Language has a universal grammar because the coding rule does not depend on such specific parameters and can then be applied to any Sender-Receiver game with noisy communication.

Keywords: grammar; pragmatic language; prototypes; separating equilibria (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C61 C73 D82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cta
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Journal Article: Pragmatic languages with universal grammars (2012)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:dbe:wpaper:0110

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