Category: Linguistics

Does Language Shape Thought? Different Manifestations of the Idea of Linguistic Relativity (I)

Does the language we speak influence or even shape the way we think? Last December, there was an interesting debate over at The Economist website with Lera Boroditsky defending the motion, and Language Log’s Mark Liberman against the motion (who IMO, both did a very good job).
The result of the online poll was quite clear: 78% agreed with the motion, while 22% disagreed.

There are, however, three main problems with this way of framing the question: First, it’s not really clear what ‘language’ really is, second, the same goes for “thought”, and third, there are many many ways of how “influencing” and “shaping” something can be conceptualized.
In this post I want to focus on the third problem and present a very useful classification system for hypotheses about linguistic relativity outlined in an article by Phillip Wolff and Kevin J. Holmes, which was published in the current issue Wiley Interdisciplinary Review: Cognitive Science.

Continue reading “Does Language Shape Thought? Different Manifestations of the Idea of Linguistic Relativity (I)”

Linguistic Structure: the Result of L2 Learners?

Wray and Grace (2007) propose that the structure of a language is dependent of the social structure of the population who speak it. Lupyan & Dale (2010) later showed this using statistical analysis. This has been discussed extensively on this blog before:

http://www.replicatedtypo.com/science/language-as-a-complex-adaptive-system/422/

http://www.replicatedtypo.com/uncategorized/memory-social-structure-and-language-why-siestas-affect-morphological-complexity/2382/

One of the proposed reasons for why large population size is thought to affect linguistic structure is that larger populations will have a larger ratio of second language (L2) speakers to first language (L1) speakers.

Languages within exoteric niches (large population and geographical spread with many language neighbors) have been shown to be more more morphologically isolating and, as a result, regular. This has proposed to be because of the biases of adult second language learners.

Esoteric languages are more irregular and morphologically complex and idiosyncratic. This is thought to be because of the biases of child learners.

There are studies which show that adult learners have a tendency to regularise languages but only under some circumstances. Hudson Kam & Newport (2009) show that adult learners will regularise unpredictable variability but only if it exists above a certain level of scatter and complexity.

As for the learning biases of children, Wray & Grace (2007) cite only one study which looked at children who were ‘native’ speakers of Esperanto (Bergen, 2001). Bergen (2001) found that the language that the children learnt displayed a loss of the accusative case and also displayed attrition in the tense system. Although Wray & Grace (2007) suggest that this explains patterns seen in esoteric communities, it may not be as straight forward as they suggest. The evidence suggests that esoteric conditions are going to display more morphological strategies in their languages which is the opposite to the biases the child learners of Esperanto are displaying. The children are rejecting morphological strategies in favour of attrition and word order.

I wanted to point out in this post that there is evidence to suggest that adult learners preserve irregularities and idiosyncrasies, while children learners regularize (suggesting the opposite to Wray & Grace).

Studies which have addressed these problems include Hudson Kam & Newport (2005) where adult learners of an artificial language preserved unpredictable variation and child learners of the same language regularized it. Hudson Kam & Newport (2009) show in a similar study that child learners of an artificial language will regularise unpredictable irregularity but, as mentioned above, adult learners will only do this where the irregularity passes a certain level of complexity.

However, some evidence does support Wray & Grace’s (2007) proposal about adult learners.  Smith & Wonnacott (2010) show that despite there being a tendency within individual adult learners to maintain the level of unpredicted variability within the language learning process, when put into a diffusion chain of adult learners the language regularises.  Smith & Wonnacott (2010) suggest that gradual processes such as this can explain the regularisation of languages over time. While this fits nicely with Wray & Grace’s (2007) theory there is still the problem that children are just as liable to regularise as adults if not more so.

 

This is just some relevant experiments which I thought lent something to the debate. I know there are other factors which have been proposed to have an effect on linguistic structure. I was just curious about people’s opinions on quite to what level L2 speakers have an effect.

The Return of the Phoneme Inventories

Right, I already referred to Atkinson’s paper in a previous post, and much of the work he’s presented is essentially part of a potential PhD project I’m hoping to do. Much of this stems back to last summer, where I mentioned how the phoneme inventory size correlates with certain demographic features, such as population size and population density. Using the the UPSID data I generated a generalised additive model to demonstrate how area and population size interact in determining the phoneme inventory size:

Interestingly, Atkinson seems to derive much of his thinking, at least in his choice of demographic variables, from work into the transmission of cultural artefacts (see here and here). For me, there are clear uses for these demographic models in testing hypotheses for linguistic transmission and change, as I see language as a cultural product. It appears Atkinson reached the same conclusion. Where we depart, however, is in our overall explanations of the data. My major problem with the claim is theoretical: he hasn’t ruled out other historical-evolutionary explanations for these patterns.

Before we get into the bulk of my criticism, I’ll provide a very brief overview of the paper.

Continue reading “The Return of the Phoneme Inventories”

Phonemic Diversity Supports a Serial Founder Effect Model of Language Expansion from Africa

Just read about an article on phoneme diversity via GNXP and Babel’s Dawn. Hopefully I’ll share some of my thoughts on the paper this weekend as it clearly ties in with work I’m currently doing (see here and here). Below is the abstract:

Human genetic and phenotypic diversity declines with distance from Africa, as predicted by a serial founder effect in which successive population bottlenecks during range expansion progressively reduce diversity, underpinning support for an African origin of modern humans. Recent work suggests that a similar founder effect may operate on human culture and language. here I show that the number of phonemes used in a global sample of 504 languages is also clinal and fits a serial founder-effect model of expansion from an inferred origin in Africa. This result, which is no explained by more recent demographic history, local language diversity, or statistical non-independence within language families, points to parallel mechanisms shaping genetic and linguistic diversity and supports an African origin of modern human languages.

Reference: Atkinson, Q.D (2011). Phonemic Diversity Supports a Serial Founder Effect Model of Language Expansion from Africa. Science 332, 346. DOI: 10.1126/science.1199295.

Update: I’ve given a lengthier response here.

Evolved structure of language shows lineage-specific trends in word-order universals

Via Simon Greenhill:

Dunn M, Greenhill SJ, Levinson SC, & Gray RD (2011). Evolved structure of language shows lineage-specific trends in word-order universals. Nature.

Some colleagues and I have a new paper out in Nature showing that the evolved structure of language shows lineage-specific trends in word-order universals. I’ve written an overview/FAQ on this paper here, and there’s a nice review of it here and here.

The Abstract:

Languages vary widely but not without limit. The central goal of linguistics is to describe the diversity of human languages and explain the constraints on that diversity. Generative linguists following Chomsky have claimed that linguistic diversity must be constrained by innate parameters that are set as a child learns a language. In contrast, other linguists following Greenberg have claimed that there are statistical tendencies for co-occurrence of traits reflecting universal systems biases, rather than absolute constraints or parametric variation. Here we use computational phylogenetic methods to address the nature of constraints on linguistic diversity in an evolutionary framework. First, contrary to the generative account of parameter setting, we show that the evolution of only a few word-order features of languages are strongly correlated. Second, contrary to the Greenbergian generalizations, we show that most observed functional dependencies between traits are lineage-specific rather than universal tendencies. These findings support the view that—at least with respect to word order—cultural evolution is the primary factor that determines linguistic structure, with the current state of a linguistic system shaping and constraining future states.

 

The Biology of the Language Faculty: Its perfection, past and future

Just came across these videos of Noam Chomsky via the Linguistics Blog:

The Biology of the Language Faculty: Its Perfection, Past and Future by Noam Chomsky (1/4) from Joe Zavala on Vimeo.

 

The Biology of the Language Faculty: Its Perfection, Past and Future by Noam Chomsky (2/4) from Joe Zavala on Vimeo.

 

The Biology of the Language Faculty: Its Perfection, Past and Future by Noam Chomsky (3/4) from Joe Zavala on Vimeo.

 

The Biology of the Language Faculty: Its Perfection, Past and Future by Noam Chomsky (4/4) from Joe Zavala on Vimeo.

I haven’t had chance to watch these yet, and I’m not sure when I’ll next get a chance, but I’ll try and come back to this over the next few days.

Wampanoag film

 

A new documentary has been made about the resurrection of the Wampanoag language which has a few screenings coming up next month in the US. DVD’s are also available and details of both can be found here.

The story begins in 1994 when Jessie Little Doe, an intrepid, thirty-something Wampanoag social worker, began having recurring dreams: familiar-looking people from another time addressing her in an incomprehensible language. Jessie was perplexed and a little annoyed– why couldn’t they speak English? Later, she realized they were speaking Wampanoag, a language no one had used for more than a century. These events

sent her and members of the Aquinnah and Mashpee Wampanaog communities on an odyssey that would uncover hundreds of documents written in their language, lead Jessie to a Masters in Linguistics at MIT, and result in something that had never been done before – bringing a language alive again in an American Indian community after many generations with no Native speakers.

WE STILL LIVE HERE: As Nutayunean clip

Although I haven’t seen the film it sounds to be very much in the same vein as “the linguists” which came out in 2008. The Linguists follows two field linguists as they travel to document and help promote the rescue of near-extinct languages.

Documenting and reviving languages is an important thing to do as it increases our understanding of language. Every time a language dies we lose data which can inform us on the interactions between cognitive constraints and culture. A language dies every 14 days. Bearing that in mind, here’s a few links if you’re interested in this stuff:

SAIVUS (Society to Advance Indigenous Vernaculars of the United States): http://www.saivus.org/

Wampanoag Language Reclamation Project: http://wlrp.org/

Enduring voices: http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/travel/enduring-voices/

And a whole bunch of other links here: http://www.saivus.org/saivuslinks.html

 

Project Nim

How cool is this? They’ve made a movie about Nim Chimpsky called Project Nim!

By the same guys who made Man on Wire, it’s currently been shown at the Sundance Festival.

Nim was  raised and nurtured like a human child in order to see to what extent apes could acquire human language.

SO CUTE!

Following Nim’s extraordinary journey through human society, and the enduring impact he makes on the people he meets along the way, the film is an unflinching and unsentimental biography of an animal we tried to make human. What we learn about his true nature – and indeed our own – is comic, revealing and profoundly unsettling.

 

http://sundance.slated.com/2011/films/projectnim_sundance2011

The Genesis of Grammar

In my previous post on linguistic replicators and major transitions, I mentioned grammaticalisation as a process that might inform us about the contentive-functional split in the lexicon. Naturally, it makes sense that grammaticalisation might offer insights into other transitions in linguistics, and, thanks to an informative comment from a regular reader, I was directed to a book chapter by Heine & Kuteva (2007): The Genesis of Grammar: On combining nouns. I might dedicate a post to the paper in the future, but, as with many previous claims, this probably won’t happen. So instead, here is the abstract and a table of the authors’ hypothesised grammatical innovations:

That it is possible to propose a reconstruction of how grammar evolved in human languages is argued for by Heine and Kuteva (2007). Using observations made within the framework of grammaticalization theory, these authors hypothesize that time-stable entities denoting concrete referential concepts, commonly referred to as ‘nouns’, must have been among the first items distinguished by early humans in linguistic discourse. Based on crosslinguistic findings on grammatical change, this chapter presents a scenario of how nouns may have contributed to introducing linguistic complexity in language evolution.