Sound systems vary dramatically in their lower-level details as a result of cultural evolution, but the presence of systematic organisation is universal. Why does variation pattern differently at these two levels of abstraction, and what can this tell us about the cognitive mechanisms that underpin human acquisition of speech? We explore an evolutionary rationale for the proposal that human learning extends to, and is perhaps even specialised for, making inferences at the higher-order level of abstraction. The ability to infer systematicity from distributional cues, by identifying signatures of structural homogeneity and anticipating subtle exceptions, can bootstrap lower-level learning, and is not subject to the moving target problem, a major evolutionary objection to specialisation in speech cognition. We examine this idea from a statistical perspective, by studying the representational assumptions that underpin generalisation among concurrent phonetic category induction problems. We present a probabilistic model for jointly inferring individual sound classes and a system-wide blue-print for the balance of shared and idiosyncratic structure among these classes. These models lead us to an evolutionary conjecture: culture pushes cognitive adaptation up the hierarchy of abstraction in learning
{"title":"Structure and abstraction in phonetic computation: Learning to generalise among concurrent acquisition problems","authors":"Bill D. Thompson, B. D. Boer","doi":"10.1093/JOLE/LZX013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/JOLE/LZX013","url":null,"abstract":"Sound systems vary dramatically in their lower-level details as a result of cultural evolution, but the presence of systematic organisation is universal. Why does variation pattern differently at these two levels of abstraction, and what can this tell us about the cognitive mechanisms that underpin human acquisition of speech? We explore an evolutionary rationale for the proposal that human learning extends to, and is perhaps even specialised for, making inferences at the higher-order level of abstraction. The ability to infer systematicity from distributional cues, by identifying signatures of structural homogeneity and anticipating subtle exceptions, can bootstrap lower-level learning, and is not subject to the moving target problem, a major evolutionary objection to specialisation in speech cognition. We examine this idea from a statistical perspective, by studying the representational assumptions that underpin generalisation among concurrent phonetic category induction problems. We present a probabilistic model for jointly inferring individual sound classes and a system-wide blue-print for the balance of shared and idiosyncratic structure among these classes. These models lead us to an evolutionary conjecture: culture pushes cognitive adaptation up the hierarchy of abstraction in learning","PeriodicalId":37118,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Language Evolution","volume":"2 1","pages":"94-112"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2017-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/JOLE/LZX013","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"61534450","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"What phoneme networks tell us about the age of language families","authors":"Roland Mühlenbernd, Taraka Rama","doi":"10.1093/JOLE/LZX007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/JOLE/LZX007","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":37118,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Language Evolution","volume":"2 1","pages":"67-76"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2017-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/JOLE/LZX007","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"61534672","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Atkinson (2011) shows that phoneme inventories are largest in Africa and smaller elsewhere, and suggests that this clinal distribution reflects a serial founder effect of human migrations out of Africa. Because of the way in which velaric ingressive and pulmonic egressive airstream mechanisms combine to create extra-large consonant inventories, click languages have the largest phoneme inventories of all. Critics question why phoneme inventory size, but not other properties of language, should leave a trace of the origin and dispersal of natural language. This article argues that the first modern human languages would likely have had very large phoneme inventories if we assume, following Hockett’s work (1960), that duality of patterning was the last ‘design feature’ of language to emerge. The diachronic trajectories of sign languages and writing systems illustrate that dually patterned phonologies are often preceded by a stage in which minimal units of form map directly onto semantic functions. Following Hjelmslev (1961), I label such linguistic systems, ‘monoplanar’. The article critiques language origins theories that have claimed that click consonants were sounds employed in the development of human speech because of their putatively iconic or sound symbolic properties. Focusing on the structural effects of velaric ingressives for phoneme inventory size, I argue that clicks would have been essential in elaborating large inventories, and thus large vocabularies, in monoplanar spoken languages not because of any inherently iconic properties, but because of their capacity to multiply phonemic distinctions by combining with accompaniments produced via the pulmonic egressive airstream mechanism. The contemporary distribution of phonemic clicks offers support for the hypothesis, as genetic studies increasingly point to an Eastern or Southern African origin for modern humans, while phonemic clicks have an areal but non-genetically restricted distribution in overlap-ping vicinities.
{"title":"Phoneme inventory size and the transition from monoplanar to dually patterned speech","authors":"Luke Fleming","doi":"10.1093/JOLE/LZX010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/JOLE/LZX010","url":null,"abstract":"Atkinson (2011) shows that phoneme inventories are largest in Africa and smaller elsewhere, and suggests that this clinal distribution reflects a serial founder effect of human migrations out of Africa. Because of the way in which velaric ingressive and pulmonic egressive airstream mechanisms combine to create extra-large consonant inventories, click languages have the largest phoneme inventories of all. Critics question why phoneme inventory size, but not other properties of language, should leave a trace of the origin and dispersal of natural language. This article argues that the first modern human languages would likely have had very large phoneme inventories if we assume, following Hockett’s work (1960), that duality of patterning was the last ‘design feature’ of language to emerge. The diachronic trajectories of sign languages and writing systems illustrate that dually patterned phonologies are often preceded by a stage in which minimal units of form map directly onto semantic functions. Following Hjelmslev (1961), I label such linguistic systems, ‘monoplanar’. The article critiques language origins theories that have claimed that click consonants were sounds employed in the development of human speech because of their putatively iconic or sound symbolic properties. Focusing on the structural effects of velaric ingressives for phoneme inventory size, I argue that clicks would have been essential in elaborating large inventories, and thus large vocabularies, in monoplanar spoken languages not because of any inherently iconic properties, but because of their capacity to multiply phonemic distinctions by combining with accompaniments produced via the pulmonic egressive airstream mechanism. The contemporary distribution of phonemic clicks offers support for the hypothesis, as genetic studies increasingly point to an Eastern or Southern African origin for modern humans, while phonemic clicks have an areal but non-genetically restricted distribution in overlap-ping vicinities.","PeriodicalId":37118,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Language Evolution","volume":"2 1","pages":"52-66"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2017-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/JOLE/LZX010","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"61534405","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
It has been observed by several researchers that the Khoisan palate tends to lack a prominent alveolar ridge. A biomechanical model of click production was created to examine if these sounds might be subject to an anatomical bias associated with alveolar ridge size. Results suggest the bias is plausible, taking the form of decreased articulatory effort and improved volume change characteristics; how-ever, further modeling and experimental research is required to solidify the claim.
{"title":"Anatomical biasing and clicks: Evidence from biomechanical modeling","authors":"S. Moisik, D. Dediu","doi":"10.1093/JOLE/LZX004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/JOLE/LZX004","url":null,"abstract":"It has been observed by several researchers that the Khoisan palate tends to lack a prominent alveolar ridge. A biomechanical model of click production was created to examine if these sounds might be subject to an anatomical bias associated with alveolar ridge size. Results suggest the bias is plausible, taking the form of decreased articulatory effort and improved volume change characteristics; how-ever, further modeling and experimental research is required to solidify the claim.","PeriodicalId":37118,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Language Evolution","volume":"2 1","pages":"37-51"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2017-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/JOLE/LZX004","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"61534374","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2017-01-01Epub Date: 2017-06-26DOI: 10.1093/jole/lzx015
Morgan L Gustison, Thore J Bergman
Human speech has many complex spectral and temporal features traditionally thought to be absent in the vocalizations of other primates. Recent explorations of the vocal capabilities of non-human primates are challenging this view. Here, we continue this trend by exploring the spectro-temporal properties of gelada (Theropithecus gelada) vocalizations. First, we made cross-species comparisons of geladas, chacma baboons, and human vowel space area. We found that adult male and female gelada exhaled grunts-a call type shared with baboons-have formant profiles that overlap more with human vowel space than do baboon grunts. These gelada grunts also contained more modulation of fundamental and formant frequencies than did baboon grunts. Second, we compared formant profiles and modulation of exhaled grunts to the derived call types (those not shared with baboons) produced by gelada males. These derived calls contained divergent formant profiles, and a subset of them, notably wobbles and vocalized yawns, were more modulated than grunts. Third, we investigated the rhythmic patterns of wobbles, a call type shown previously to contain cycles that match the 3-8 Hz tempo of speech. We use a larger dataset to show that the wobble rhythm overlaps more with speech rhythm than previously thought. We also found that variation in cycle duration depends on the production modality; specifically, exhaled wobbles were produced at a slower tempo than inhaled wobbles. Moreover, the variability in cycle duration within wobbles aligns with a linguistic property known as 'Menzerath's law' in that there was a negative association between cycle duration and wobble size (i.e. the number of cycles). Taken together, our results add to growing evidence that non-human primates are anatomically capable of producing modulated sounds. Our results also support and expand on current hypotheses of speech evolution, including the 'neural hypothesis' and the 'bimodal speech rhythm hypothesis'.
{"title":"Divergent acoustic properties of gelada and baboon vocalizations and their implications for the evolution of human speech.","authors":"Morgan L Gustison, Thore J Bergman","doi":"10.1093/jole/lzx015","DOIUrl":"10.1093/jole/lzx015","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Human speech has many complex spectral and temporal features traditionally thought to be absent in the vocalizations of other primates. Recent explorations of the vocal capabilities of non-human primates are challenging this view. Here, we continue this trend by exploring the spectro-temporal properties of gelada (<i>Theropithecus gelada</i>) vocalizations. First, we made cross-species comparisons of geladas, chacma baboons, and human vowel space area. We found that adult male and female gelada exhaled grunts-a call type shared with baboons-have formant profiles that overlap more with human vowel space than do baboon grunts. These gelada grunts also contained more modulation of fundamental and formant frequencies than did baboon grunts. Second, we compared formant profiles and modulation of exhaled grunts to the derived call types (those not shared with baboons) produced by gelada males. These derived calls contained divergent formant profiles, and a subset of them, notably wobbles and vocalized yawns, were more modulated than grunts. Third, we investigated the rhythmic patterns of wobbles, a call type shown previously to contain cycles that match the 3-8 Hz tempo of speech. We use a larger dataset to show that the wobble rhythm overlaps more with speech rhythm than previously thought. We also found that variation in cycle duration depends on the production modality; specifically, exhaled wobbles were produced at a slower tempo than inhaled wobbles. Moreover, the variability in cycle duration within wobbles aligns with a linguistic property known as 'Menzerath's law' in that there was a negative association between cycle duration and wobble size (i.e. the number of cycles). Taken together, our results add to growing evidence that non-human primates are anatomically capable of producing modulated sounds. Our results also support and expand on current hypotheses of speech evolution, including the 'neural hypothesis' and the 'bimodal speech rhythm hypothesis'.</p>","PeriodicalId":37118,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Language Evolution","volume":"2 1","pages":"20-36"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2017-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6681840/pdf/lzx015.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41215095","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Research on the evolution of human speech and phonology benefits from the comparative approach: structural, spectral, and temporal features can be extracted and compared across species in an attempt to reconstruct the evolutionary history of human speech. Here we focus on analytical tools to measure and compare temporal structure in human speech and animal vocalizations. We introduce the reader to a range of statistical methods usable, on the one hand, to quantify rhythmic complexity in single vocalizations, and on the other hand, to compare rhythmic structure between multiple vocalizations. These methods include: time series analysis, distributional measures, variability metrics, Fourier transform, autoand cross-correlation, phase portraits, and circular statistics. Using computer-generated data, we apply a range of techniques, walking the reader through the necessary software and its functions. We describe which techniques are most appropriate to test particular hypotheses on rhythmic structure, and provide possible interpretations of the tests. These techniques can be equally well applied to find rhythmic structure in gesture, movement, and any other behavior developing over time, when the research focus lies on its temporal structure. This introduction to quantitative techniques for rhythm and timing analysis will hopefully spur additional comparative research, and will produce comparable results across all disciplines working on the evolution of speech, ultimately advancing the field.
{"title":"Measuring rhythmic complexity: A primer to quantify and compare temporal structure in speech, movement, and animal vocalizations","authors":"A. Ravignani, Philipp Norton","doi":"10.1093/JOLE/LZX002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/JOLE/LZX002","url":null,"abstract":"Research on the evolution of human speech and phonology benefits from the comparative approach: structural, spectral, and temporal features can be extracted and compared across species in an attempt to reconstruct the evolutionary history of human speech. Here we focus on analytical tools to measure and compare temporal structure in human speech and animal vocalizations. We introduce the reader to a range of statistical methods usable, on the one hand, to quantify rhythmic complexity in single vocalizations, and on the other hand, to compare rhythmic structure between multiple vocalizations. These methods include: time series analysis, distributional measures, variability metrics, Fourier transform, autoand cross-correlation, phase portraits, and circular statistics. Using computer-generated data, we apply a range of techniques, walking the reader through the necessary software and its functions. We describe which techniques are most appropriate to test particular hypotheses on rhythmic structure, and provide possible interpretations of the tests. These techniques can be equally well applied to find rhythmic structure in gesture, movement, and any other behavior developing over time, when the research focus lies on its temporal structure. This introduction to quantitative techniques for rhythm and timing analysis will hopefully spur additional comparative research, and will produce comparable results across all disciplines working on the evolution of speech, ultimately advancing the field.","PeriodicalId":37118,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Language Evolution","volume":"2 1","pages":"4-19"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2017-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/JOLE/LZX002","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"61534315","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Some mental categories map to percepts which are products of human behaviors, such as linguistic signals. Because behavior is learned and updated by experience, biases in the way a behavior is perceived can influence how it is reproduced, allowing behaviorally based categories to evolve over time. Here we show that this perception–production feedback loop can itself promote preservation of contrast between categories. Using both simulation and analytical tools, we show that asymmetries in the mapping of perceptual variants to competing categories acts to sharpen category boundaries. Evidence from patterns of change in modern languages is consistent with this mechanism. Because the ability to maintain a large number of distinct signal/meaning categories is a prerequisite for complex language, this cognitively general mechanism may have contributed to the initial evolution of the language faculty.
{"title":"Category competition as a driver of category contrast","authors":"A. Wedel, I. Fatkullin","doi":"10.1093/JOLE/LZX009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/JOLE/LZX009","url":null,"abstract":"Some mental categories map to percepts which are products of human behaviors, such as linguistic signals. Because behavior is learned and updated by experience, biases in the way a behavior is perceived can influence how it is reproduced, allowing behaviorally based categories to evolve over time. Here we show that this perception–production feedback loop can itself promote preservation of contrast between categories. Using both simulation and analytical tools, we show that asymmetries in the mapping of perceptual variants to competing categories acts to sharpen category boundaries. Evidence from patterns of change in modern languages is consistent with this mechanism. Because the ability to maintain a large number of distinct signal/meaning categories is a prerequisite for complex language, this cognitively general mechanism may have contributed to the initial evolution of the language faculty.","PeriodicalId":37118,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Language Evolution","volume":"4 1","pages":"77-93"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2017-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/JOLE/LZX009","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"61534815","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article investigates the terminology and the processes underlying the fundamental historical relations between words in linguistics ( cognacy ) and genes in biology ( homology ). The comparison between linguistics and biology shows that there are major inconsistencies in the analogies drawn between the two research fields and the models applied in phylogenetic reconstruction in linguistics. Cognacy between words is treated as a binary relation which is either present or not. Words, however, can exhibit different degrees of cognacy which go beyond the distinction between orthologous and paralogous genes in biology. The complex nature of cognacy has strong implications for the models used for phylogenetic reconstruction. Instead of modeling lexical evolution as a process of cognate gain and cognate loss, we need to go beyond the cognate relation and develop models which take the degrees of cognacy into account. This opts for the use of evolutionary models which handle multistate characters and allow to define potentially asymmetrical transition tendencies among the character states instead of time-reversible binary state models in phylogenetic approaches. The benefit of multistate models with asymmetric transition tendencies is demonstrated by testing how well different models of lexical change perform in semantic reconstruction on a lexicostatistical dataset of 23 Chinese dialects in a parsimony framework. The results show that the improved models largely outperform the popular gain–loss models. This suggests that improved models of lexical change may have strong consequences for phylogenetic approaches in linguistics.
{"title":"Beyond cognacy: historical relations between words and their implication for phylogenetic reconstruction","authors":"Johann-Mattis List","doi":"10.1093/JOLE/LZW006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/JOLE/LZW006","url":null,"abstract":"This article investigates the terminology and the processes underlying the fundamental historical relations between words in linguistics ( cognacy ) and genes in biology ( homology ). The comparison between linguistics and biology shows that there are major inconsistencies in the analogies drawn between the two research fields and the models applied in phylogenetic reconstruction in linguistics. Cognacy between words is treated as a binary relation which is either present or not. Words, however, can exhibit different degrees of cognacy which go beyond the distinction between orthologous and paralogous genes in biology. The complex nature of cognacy has strong implications for the models used for phylogenetic reconstruction. Instead of modeling lexical evolution as a process of cognate gain and cognate loss, we need to go beyond the cognate relation and develop models which take the degrees of cognacy into account. This opts for the use of evolutionary models which handle multistate characters and allow to define potentially asymmetrical transition tendencies among the character states instead of time-reversible binary state models in phylogenetic approaches. The benefit of multistate models with asymmetric transition tendencies is demonstrated by testing how well different models of lexical change perform in semantic reconstruction on a lexicostatistical dataset of 23 Chinese dialects in a parsimony framework. The results show that the improved models largely outperform the popular gain–loss models. This suggests that improved models of lexical change may have strong consequences for phylogenetic approaches in linguistics.","PeriodicalId":37118,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Language Evolution","volume":"1 1","pages":"119-136"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2016-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/JOLE/LZW006","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"61533903","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The experimental study of language change may provide novel insights into the nature of language, in particular on the role of cognitive biases and social processes in shaping grammatical and semantic structures. Here, we introduce multigenerational signaling games (MGSGs) as a new experimental paradigm for investigating how simple compositional languages emerge and change during transmission across generations in a diffusion chain, where each transmission step requires coordination between sender and receiver in a signaling game. We obtained three main results. First, we replicate and extend earlier findings by Moreno and Baggio suggesting that, in signaling games with fixed roles, mappings of signals to meanings tend to be transmitted from senders to receivers. We show that this holds for signaling games played in diffusion chains too, in which the receiver in one game becomes the sender in the next game. Second, we provide an experimental proof of concept that MGSGs are a viable laboratory model of cultural language change. Players consistently agreed upon a common signaling system after repeated signaling rounds, and the resulting code was effectively transmitted and gradually modified over generations. Third, we establish a baseline of results for further research using MGSGs. We found that the order of elements initially imposed on signals is largely maintained by successive generations. Moreover, the degree of coordination among players and the fidelity of inter-generational transmission exhibit a cumulative increase across generations. Finally, replicating a seminal result by Esper, we observed that morphological marking of semantic categories such as agent, action, and patient emerged gradually in the course of transmission.
{"title":"The emergence of word order and morphology in compositional languages via multigenerational signaling games","authors":"Iga Nowak, Giosuè Baggio","doi":"10.1093/JOLE/LZW007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/JOLE/LZW007","url":null,"abstract":"The experimental study of language change may provide novel insights into the nature of language, in particular on the role of cognitive biases and social processes in shaping grammatical and semantic structures. Here, we introduce multigenerational signaling games (MGSGs) as a new experimental paradigm for investigating how simple compositional languages emerge and change during transmission across generations in a diffusion chain, where each transmission step requires coordination between sender and receiver in a signaling game. We obtained three main results. First, we replicate and extend earlier findings by Moreno and Baggio suggesting that, in signaling games with fixed roles, mappings of signals to meanings tend to be transmitted from senders to receivers. We show that this holds for signaling games played in diffusion chains too, in which the receiver in one game becomes the sender in the next game. Second, we provide an experimental proof of concept that MGSGs are a viable laboratory model of cultural language change. Players consistently agreed upon a common signaling system after repeated signaling rounds, and the resulting code was effectively transmitted and gradually modified over generations. Third, we establish a baseline of results for further research using MGSGs. We found that the order of elements initially imposed on signals is largely maintained by successive generations. Moreover, the degree of coordination among players and the fidelity of inter-generational transmission exhibit a cumulative increase across generations. Finally, replicating a seminal result by Esper, we observed that morphological marking of semantic categories such as agent, action, and patient emerged gradually in the course of transmission.","PeriodicalId":37118,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Language Evolution","volume":"1 1","pages":"137-150"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2016-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/JOLE/LZW007","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"61533965","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Evolutionary syntax , by Ljiljana Progovac, OUP (2015) 280 pp, £24.99. In this monograph, Progovac argues for an incremental evolution of cognitive capacities underpinning syntactic structure, with Conjoin (a binary, non-recursive operation immune to movement and embedding) anteceding recursive Merge. This distinction plays out over four stages, described in Chapters 1–4, with Merge only visible in stage 4. 1. Single words; 2. Two-word combinations, for example, Case closed ; 3. ‘Proto-coordination’, where linkers like English as or Mandarin de mark binary predicate–argument relations; 4. Specific functional categories, permitting recursive syntactic structures. Progovac’s primary evidence comes from syntactic analysis of constructions, such as those above, identified as linguistic fossils (Jackendoff 1999). However, most chapters contain sections on ‘corroborating evidence’, summarizing findings from acquisition, imaging studies, and other related fields, although the interpretation of such evidence is often inconclusive (Boeckx 2016). There are several innovations in the details. For example, the stage 2 grammar, which creates binary verb–noun (VN) combinations, is claimed to have no subject–object distinction (resulting in ‘absolutive’ grammar in Progovac’s terms). This is reflected in English and Serbian VN compounds, where a rattlesnake is a snake that rattles, while rotgut is alcohol that rots guts. Similar indeterminacy is demonstrated in Tongan and Riau Indonesian. A second novel claim is that the capacity for binary protosyntactic combination within a ‘clause’ (stage 2) is linked to binary combination of clauses (stage 2a), giving a strictly finite device which can mimic subordination to a limited extent. Likewise, linkers at stage 3 may appear between predicate and argument, or between clauses. Many of these novel accounts of individual constructions are genuinely insightful and thought-provoking. Progovac argues that constructions which look quirky and cussed from the perspective of modern syntactic theory may be elegantly analysed within the terms of less expressive models of syntax. As … rob.truswell{at}ed.ac.uk
{"title":"Evolutionary Syntax , by Ljiljana Progovac","authors":"R. Truswell","doi":"10.1093/JOLE/LZW008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/JOLE/LZW008","url":null,"abstract":"Evolutionary syntax , by Ljiljana Progovac, OUP (2015) 280 pp, £24.99.\u0000\u0000In this monograph, Progovac argues for an incremental evolution of cognitive capacities underpinning syntactic structure, with Conjoin (a binary, non-recursive operation immune to movement and embedding) anteceding recursive Merge. This distinction plays out over four stages, described in Chapters 1–4, with Merge only visible in stage 4. \u0000\u00001. Single words;\u0000\u00002. Two-word combinations, for example, Case closed ;\u0000\u00003. ‘Proto-coordination’, where linkers like English as or Mandarin de mark binary predicate–argument relations;\u0000\u00004. Specific functional categories, permitting recursive syntactic structures.\u0000\u0000Progovac’s primary evidence comes from syntactic analysis of constructions, such as those above, identified as linguistic fossils (Jackendoff 1999). However, most chapters contain sections on ‘corroborating evidence’, summarizing findings from acquisition, imaging studies, and other related fields, although the interpretation of such evidence is often inconclusive (Boeckx 2016).\u0000\u0000There are several innovations in the details. For example, the stage 2 grammar, which creates binary verb–noun (VN) combinations, is claimed to have no subject–object distinction (resulting in ‘absolutive’ grammar in Progovac’s terms). This is reflected in English and Serbian VN compounds, where a rattlesnake is a snake that rattles, while rotgut is alcohol that rots guts. Similar indeterminacy is demonstrated in Tongan and Riau Indonesian. A second novel claim is that the capacity for binary protosyntactic combination within a ‘clause’ (stage 2) is linked to binary combination of clauses (stage 2a), giving a strictly finite device which can mimic subordination to a limited extent. Likewise, linkers at stage 3 may appear between predicate and argument, or between clauses.\u0000\u0000Many of these novel accounts of individual constructions are genuinely insightful and thought-provoking. Progovac argues that constructions which look quirky and cussed from the perspective of modern syntactic theory may be elegantly analysed within the terms of less expressive models of syntax. As … rob.truswell{at}ed.ac.uk","PeriodicalId":37118,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Language Evolution","volume":"1 1","pages":"168-170"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2016-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/JOLE/LZW008","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"61534060","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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