How to Cite Blogs

I was perusing the backlogs of the ecology blog Oikos, when I ran into this post on how to cite blogs. As we pride ourselves here at Replicated Typo on bring changers-of-the-field, movers of literary mountains, sifters through the dregs of boring research, and general key-holders and gatekeepers to evolutionary linguistics and cultural science (arguably justifiable or not) – I figured I should probably put links as to how to cite us here, too.

So, here’s a good link at PLoS about how to cite blogs. – in BibTeX, MLA, Chicago, and APA styles. That’s most of what you’ll probably need.

So, go ahead and get citing.

Full disclosure: I am a struggling academic, and would like more citations. That may or may not have influenced the writing of this post.

How would you convince an undergraduate to start blogging?

Why do you blog about your research?  Why do you read other blogs?  Does blogging improve your employability?  Are there hidden advantages to blogging?

How would you convince an undergraduate to start blogging?

I’m giving a talk during Edinburgh’s ominous ‘Innovative Learning Week’ on how and why to blog about your research (more details here).  One of the key messages I hoped to convey was that blogging helps your research by crowd-sourcing criticism:  If you put something up on the web, someone might help you.

So there I was trying to come up with reasons about why you should blog, when I realised:  I could put the talk online and see if anyone helps.  Insight fail.

So, why do you blog?  Has it helped your career?

So far, my main source of facts about the question above has been Geißler et al. 2011, who survey geoscience bloggers.  They find, in line with the general blogging community, that the majority of bloggers are male, and about half are from the USA.  Graduate students and university faculty make up the largest proportion, with freelancers and industry bloggers coming next.  There are proportionately few undergraduates who blog.

The most stated reasons for writing for a blog are  to share knowledge, to popularise the field, to have fun and to improve writing abilities.

Here’s their results for the sources of inspiration and perception of blogging:

Continue reading “How would you convince an undergraduate to start blogging?”

Super Smart Animals

This is what a real scientist looks like
This is what a real scientist looks like

Guest post by Keelin Murray

Readers might remember discussion of Stephen Fry’s language documentaries. Most memorable for me were shots of Stephen walking along sandy beaches, waxing lyrical about language. This new documentary about animal intelligence shares some of these elements (sandy beaches, far flung destinations), but crucially, Liz Bonnin is more than an enthusiastic observer – she is not just an engaging television presenter, but a Real Scientist (!!), with a Bachelors in Biochemistry and a Masters in Wild Animal Biology.

Continue reading “Super Smart Animals”

Evolang Program Published

The program for the 9th Evolution of Language conference has been published (here).

It’s a jam-packed schedule:  Eleven plenary talks, four parallel sessions of ordinary talks (only 15 minutes + 5 for questions) and over 50 posters.  There are also five workshops the day before the main conference.

I’ve also been given the titles of talks appearing in the workshop on constructive approaches to language evolution, although not the authors:

  • Evolution of word frequency distribution based on prediction dynamics
  • Constructive knowledge: Nomothetic approaches to language evolution
  • An evolutionary game model of building a language convention in a language contact situation
  • Reconsidering language evolution from coevolution of learning and niche construction using a concept of dynamic fitness landscape
  • Language diversity in the naming game on adaptive weighted networks
  • Synthetic modeling of cultural language evolution
  • A simple model on the evolution process of herbivore-induced plant volatiles
  • Hybrid approach for combining multiple levels of abstraction
  • From signs’ life cycle regularities to mathematical modelling of language evolution: explaining the mechanism for the formation of words’ synchronous polysemy and frequency of use distributions

I’m intrigued to find out what “herbivore-induced plant volatiles” can teach us about Language Evolution.

There are a few talks by members of Replicated Typo:

Talks

  • The Evolution of Morphological Agreement – Richard Littauer
  • Constructive knowledge: Nomothetic approaches to language evolution – Sean Roberts and James Winters

Posters

  • Cognitive Construal, Mental Spaces and the Evolution of Language and Cognition – Michael Pleyer
  • Re-Dating the Loss of Laryngeal Air Sacs in Homo sapiens – Richard Littauer (an extension of this work)
  • A Bottom-Up Approach to Language Evolution – Sean Roberts

A Cautionary Tale: Linguists are a powerful force of change (for phoneme inventories at least)

I’ve been reading through an earlier draft of my dissertation and noticed a few paragraphs that were omitted due to word length. Despite not making the final cut, it serves as nice reminder about where our data is coming from: that is, when we dive into WALS or UPSID, take a particular inventory and look at one of its phonemes, then we’re viewing something that’s been ascribed by the investigators/observers of said language. Anyway, it’s basically about the Wichí language — a member of the Matacoan language familyspoken in parts of South America’s Chaco region — and the various reports on its phoneme inventory size. N.B. The source is a PhD thesis by Megan Avram (2008).

Even if we accept the theoretical justification for the concept of a phoneme, then there is still an additional problem of how these representations are measured and recorded. These problems are neatly highlighted in the debates surrounding the Wichí language and its phoneme inventory. For instance, back in 1981 Antonio Tovar published an article showing the Wichí had 22 consonants, whereas if you were to jump forward 13 years to 1994, then Kenneth Claesson’s paper would tell you that they are down to just 16 consonants. This is quite a big difference. In WALS terms, Wichí has gone from having an average consonant inventory to a moderately small one. Great news then for those of you searching for a correlation between small communities (Wichí has approximately 25,000 speakers) and phoneme inventory inventory size. Not so great on the reliability front.

Short of conspiracy to bring the number of phonemes down (but see here), reasons for these differences are broad and varied. Some instances could be genuine differences between speech communities in the form of dialectal variation. Other reasons are more likely to be theoretically motivated. Take, as one of many examples, Claesson’s choice to omit glottalized consonants from his description of Wichí. His rationale being that these “are actually consonant clusters of a stop followed by a glottal stop” (Avram, 2008: 37-38). In summary, both sources of data are at the whims of subjectivity: for each language, or dialect, the study is reliant on the choices of potentially one researcher, at a very specific point in time, and with only a finite amount of resources (for a similar discussion, see the comments on Everett and recursion).

It’s straight out of phoneme inventories 101, but from time to time these little examples are useful as cautionary tales about the sources of data we often take for granted.

The Forgotten Linguist: Mikołaj Kruszewski

In the process of writing the first in a series of posts on the theoretical plausibility of the vanishing phonemes debate, I’ve found myself drawn into reading Daniel Silverman‘s excellent two-part article (part one and part two) on Mikołaj Kruszewski (1851-1887). You might call him one of the many forgotten linguists who, along with other notable absentees in the linguistic hall of fame, such as Erwin Esper, could have been highly influential had their ideas reached a wider audience. Although it is difficult to assess his impact on the historical development of linguistics, Kruszewksi theoretical insights certainly prefigured a lot of later work, especially regarding listener-based exemplar modelling and probability matching, as evident in this quote:

In the course of time, the sounds of a language depend on the gradual change of its articulation. We can pronounce a sound only when our memory retains an imprint of its articulation for us. If all our articulations of a given sound were reflected in this imprint in equal measure, and if the imprint represented an average of all these articulations, we, with this guidance, would always perform the articulation in question approximately the same way. But the most recent (in time) articulations, together with their fortuitous deviations, are retained by the memory far more forcefully than the earlier ones. Thus, neglibible deviations acquire the capacity to grow progressively greater…

Silverman goes on to mention some of Kruszewski’s other major insights, such as: (1) the arbitrary relationship between sound and meaning, (2) the non-teleological nature of the linguistic system, (3) the generative or creative character of language, (4) the connectionist organisation of the lexicon, and (5) the optimality-theoretic-esque proposal that linguistic systems may be analysed as the product of pressures and constraints in inherent conflict with one another. There is also a brief mention of Darwin’s influence on Kruszewski’s work (as we can see in his non-teleological stance).

The story ends on somewhat of a sad note, with Kruszweski suffering from a debilitating neurological and mental illness that cut short his promising career at the age of 36 — making his depth of scholarship and theoretical insight all the more impressive given it was produced in just eight years.

Anyway, you should take a look at the two articles, if only for an historical perspective on linguistics, but I would also suggest having a gander at some of Silverman’s other papers. He’s got his own ideas and insights that are worth considering (if you can wait, I’ll be discussing some of these in one of my next posts).

Everett, Pirahã and Recursion: The Latest

Discussing the concept of recursion is like a rite of passage for anyone interested in language evolution: you go through it once, take a position and hope it doesn’t come back to haunt you.  As Hannah pointed out last year, there are two definitions of recursion:

(1) embeddedness of phrases within other phrases, which entails keeping track of long-distance dependencies among phrases;

(2) the specification of the computed output string itself, including meta-recursion, where recursion is both the recipe for an utterance and the overarching process that creates and executes the recipe.

The case of grammatical recursion (see definition 1) is perhaps most famously associated with Noam Chomsky. Not only does he claim all human languages are recursive, but also that this ability is biologically hardwired as part of our genetic makeup. Countering Chomsky’s first claim is the debate surrounding a small Amazonian tribe called the Pirahã: even though they show signs of recursion, such as the ability to recursively embed structures within stories, the Pirahã grammar is claimed not to recursively embed phrases within other phrases. If true, then are numerous implications for a wide variety of fields in linguistics, but this is still an unsubstantiated claim: for the most part, we are relying on one specific researcher (Daniel Everett) who, despite having dedicated a large portion of his life to studying the tribe, could very well have been misled. That said, I retain a large amount of respect for Everett, having watched him speak at Edinburgh a few years ago and read his book on the topic: Don’t Sleep, There are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle.

So, why am I rambling on about recursion? Well, besides its obvious relevance, — and perhaps under-representation on this blog (deserved or not, I’ll let you decide) — Everrett has recently published a series of slides about a corpus study of Pirahã grammar (see below).

[gview file=”http://tedlab.mit.edu/tedlab_website/researchpapers/piantadosi_et_al_piraha_lsa_2012.pdf”]

His tentative conclusion: there is no strong evidence for recursion among relative clauses, complement clauses, possessive structures and conjunctions/disjunctions. However, there is possible evidence of recursive structure in topics/repeated arguments. He also posits cultural pressures for longer or shorter sentences, such as writing systems (as I mentioned way back in 2009).

I’m sure this debate will be brought to the fore at this year’s EvoLang, with Chomsky Berwick Piattelli-Palmarini and many of the Biolinguistic crowd in attendance, and it’s a shame I’ll almost certainly miss it (unless someone wants to pay for my ticket… Just hit the donate button in the left-hand corner 😉 ).

Continue reading “Everett, Pirahã and Recursion: The Latest”

You’ll never teach a monkey how to sing

While my posts are often less than serious, this one is slightly sillier than usual. It’s a song I wrote a while ago about animal communication. Enjoy/Endure/Evade:

You can read about some of the theory that I distort with my artistic license here:

Articles by Michael: Imitation in Chimpanzees ,  Animals learning syntax , Self-Domestication

Asymmetry, developmental stress and musical protolanguage (about Keelin Murray’s work)

Article by Richard: Breathing control and language

Alarm calls:  Seyfarth RM, Cheney DL, & Marler P (1980). Monkey responses to three different alarm calls: evidence of predator classification and semantic communication. Science (New York, N.Y.), 210 (4471), 801-3 PMID: 7433999

Fooling chimpanzees: Seyfarth, R., & Cheney, D. (2012). Animal Cognition: Chimpanzee Alarm Calls Depend On What Others Know Current Biology, 22 (2) DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2011.11.050

FoxP2 and birdsong: Haesler S, Rochefort C, Georgi B, Licznerski P, Osten P, & Scharff C (2007). Incomplete and inaccurate vocal imitation after knockdown of FoxP2 in songbird basal ganglia nucleus Area X. PLoS biology, 5 (12) PMID: 18052609

Evolution of voluntary control of breathing: MacLarnon AM, & Hewitt GP (1999). The evolution of human speech: the role of enhanced breathing control. American journal of physical anthropology, 109 (3), 341-63 PMID: 10407464

Tool use: Ottoni, E., & Izar, P. (2008). Capuchin monkey tool use: Overview and implications Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews, 17 (4), 171-178 DOI: 10.1002/evan.20185

Social networks and Cooperation

A new paper in Nature, by Apicella, Marlowe, Fowler & Christakis was published today. It hypothesises that social network structure may have been present in early human history, and this structure may account for the emergence of cooperation.

A new paper in Nature, by Apicella, Marlowe, Fowler & Christakis, was published today. It hypothesises that social network structure may have been present in early human history, and this structure may account for the emergence of cooperation. The study used data from the Haza people of Tanzania, who presumably already have cooperation, so I’m not sure what data they’re using to back up claims of emergence. I can’t read the article because I don’t have institutional access any more, so I’d be keen to hear thoughts others have.

Here’s the abstract:

Social networks show striking structural regularities, and both theory and evidence suggest that networks may have facilitated the development of large-scale cooperation in humans. Here, we characterize the social networks of the Hadza, a population of hunter-gatherers in Tanzania. We show that Hadza networks have important properties also seen in modernized social networks, including a skewed degree distribution, degree assortativity, transitivity, reciprocity, geographic decay and homophily. We demonstrate that Hadza camps exhibit high between-group and low within-group variation in public goods game donations. Network ties are also more likely between people who give the same amount, and the similarity in cooperative behaviour extends up to two degrees of separation. Social distance appears to be as important as genetic relatedness and physical proximity in explaining assortativity in cooperation. Our results suggest that certain elements of social network structure may have been present at an early point in human history. Also, early humans may have formed ties with both kin and non-kin, based in part on their tendency to cooperate. Social networks may thus have contributed to the emergence of cooperation.

The Great Mystery of the Vanishing Phonemes

It’s been well over a year since I first wrote about the relationship between phoneme inventory size and demography (see here and here). Since then, I have completed a thesis examining this relationship further, especially in the context of the relative roles of demography and tradeoffs between other linguistic subsystems (namely, a language’s lexicon and its morphological complexity). Outside my own bubble, the topic has exploded in popularity, culminating in the publication of Quentin Atkinson’s paper, Phonemic diversity supports a Serial Founder Effect Model of Language Expansion from Africa. It really hit home how big the topic was when I saw that the New York Times had picked up on the article. For me, this was a double-edged sword: obviously, I saw myself as the phoneme-guy over at Replicated Typo, so having someone else take this niche topic and make it popular dented my ego somewhat, but it was also a positive development in that the idea was now going to get the attention it deserved…

… Well, it sort of did and didn’t. Atkinson raised two major theoretical points in his paper. The first, and the one I’m interested in, made the link between phoneme inventory sizes, mechanisms of cultural transmission and the underlying demographic processes supporting these changes. Sadly, it was Atkinson’s second idea – that we could develop a serial founder effect model from Africa based on the phoneme inventory size – where most of the attention fell. In a methodological sense, I admired Atkinson’s approach to testing this second hypothesis, but I did feel he jumped the gun somewhat: I think more work was needed on the cultural transmission model before testing for serial founder effects. Indeed, that we haven’t developed an initial model linking the relationship between phoneme inventory size and demography, may yet prove to be Atkinson’s downfall: we should be testing multiple explanatory models (Bayesian MCMC comparison, perhaps?) rather than taking a one-size-fits-all approach.

Continue reading “The Great Mystery of the Vanishing Phonemes”