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The authors use an iterated learning model to study how meaning frequency affects the emergence of compositionality, expressivity, and stability in evolved languages. They find that high-frequency whole meanings escape grammatical pressure, but frequency applied to sub-meaning parts leads to transmission failure.
This paper reframes model collapse in LLMs as a cultural transmission phenomenon, showing that iterated learning theory predicts a non-monotonic trajectory of compositionality under self-training, confirmed across multiple languages and models.