%A Angelo Cangelosi %A Alberto Greco %A Stevan Harnad %J Simulating the Evolution of Language %T Symbol Grounding and the Symbolic Theft Hypothesis %X Computational simulations are used to model the following: (1) category learning through sensorimotor trial and error ("sensorimotor toil") and how it generates categorical perception (decreased between-category similarity and increased within-category similarity); (2) symbol grounding (the connection between symbols and the sensorimotor categories that they name); (3) the origins of language as the capacity to acquire categories indirectly, by definition alone ("symbolic theft"); and (4) the evolutionary advantage of acquiring categories by this symbolic theft instead of sensorimotor toil. %K perceptual learning, symbol grounding, categorical perception, categorization, evolution of language, neural nets %E A Cangelosi %E D Parisi %D 2002 %I Springer, London %L cogprints2132