scholarly journals Explaining grammatical coding asymmetries: Form–frequency correspondences and predictability

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-29
Author(s):  
MARTIN HASPELMATH
Keyword(s):  
Language Change ◽  
Frequency Difference ◽  
Significant Frequency ◽  
Coding Efficiency ◽  
Universal Coding ◽  
Frequency Of Use ◽  
Significant Frequency Difference

This paper claims that a wide variety of grammatical coding asymmetries can be explained as adaptations to the language users’ needs, in terms of frequency of use, predictability and coding efficiency. I claim that all grammatical oppositions involving a minimal meaning difference and a significant frequency difference are reflected in a universal coding asymmetry, i.e. a cross-linguistic pattern in which the less frequent member of the opposition gets special coding, unless the coding is uniformly explicit or uniformly zero. I give 25 examples of pairs of construction types, from a substantial range of grammatical domains. For some of them, the existing evidence from the world’s languages and from corpus counts is already strong, while for others, I know of no counterevidence and I make readily testable claims. I also discuss how the functional-adaptive forces operate in language change, and I discuss a number of possible alternative explanations.

scholarly journals Corpus-based research into the presumed effects of short EVS

Interpreting ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bart Defrancq
Keyword(s):  
European Parliament ◽  
Frequency Difference ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Significant Frequency ◽  
Source Language ◽  
The Right ◽  
Significant Frequency Difference

The aim of this study, based on 32 French speeches simultaneously interpreted into Dutch at plenary sessions of the European Parliament in late 2008, was to ascertain whether short ear-voice span (EVS) affects the quality of the interpretation as is commonly stated in the literature. The speeches and interpretations were taken from the ‘EPIC Ghent’ corpus, which is in preparation at Ghent University. Three phenomena were identified as potential effects of a short EVS: syntactic transcodage (maintaining the right-branching French ‘noun+de+noun’ structure, not using a more natural left-branching structure, in the Dutch interpretation), use of cognates similar in sound to source language forms (‘glissement phonétique’), and certain self-repairs (Barik 1973; Gile 1995). Time tags were applied to both the source and target texts, so that EVS could be measured to the nearest second from the onset of a source language item to the onset of the target language equivalent. The hypothesis was that EVS would be shorter in contexts where these three phenomena occur than elsewhere in the subcorpus. This was borne out in only one case, i.e. use of cognates: short (2 secs.) and very short (1 sec.) EVS was significantly more frequent in contexts where cognates occurred than elsewhere. There was no statistically significant frequency difference in the context of transcodage or of the relevant self-repairs.

scholarly journals Risk factors cerebral palsy with symptomatic epilepsy

2018 ◽  
pp. 38-40
Author(s):  
G. K. Sadikova ◽  
S. M. Khamidova ◽  
B. U. Agzamhadjayeva
Keyword(s):  
Risk Factors ◽  
Cerebral Palsy ◽  
Neurological Disorders ◽  
Psychomotor Retardation ◽  
Frequency Difference ◽  
Immature Brain ◽  
Significant Frequency ◽  
Live Births ◽  
Symptomatic Epilepsy ◽  
Significant Frequency Difference

Palmer F.B., Hoon A.H. (1993) wrote that cerebral palsy (CP) - a violation of the motor functions of the cortex and lesion of the immature brain, including psychomotor retardation in combination with neurological disorders: cognitive, behavioral, sensory, orthopedic problems. The frequency of CP in the population is 2.5 per 1,000 live births. In recent years, the frequency of this disabling condition is constantly growing. Many studies show a significant frequency difference of 0.76 to 5.8 per 1,000 children, which varies by region and year (Badalyan LO et al, 1988, Suleimenova RA, 2001, Shipitsyna LM, Mamaychuk II, 2001).

scholarly journals Efficiency of coding in macaque vocal communication

2010 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 469-471 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart Semple ◽  
Minna J. Hsu ◽  
Govindasamy Agoramoorthy
Keyword(s):  
Inverse Relationship ◽  
Vocal Communication ◽  
Basic Structure ◽  
Human Language ◽  
Coding System ◽  
Coding Efficiency ◽  
Frequency Of Use ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
The Law ◽  
Human Primate

A key characteristic of human language efficiency is that more frequently used words tend to be shorter in length—the ‘law of brevity’. To date, no test of this relationship between frequency of use and length has been carried out on non-human animal vocal communication. We show here that the vocal repertoire of the Formosan macaque ( Macaca cyclopis ) conforms to the pattern predicted by the law of brevity, with an inverse relationship found between call duration and rate of utterance. This finding provides evidence for coding efficiency in the vocal communication system of this species, and indicates commonality in the basic structure of the coding system between human language and vocal communication in this non-human primate.

scholarly journals Phylogenetic Methods in Historical Linguistics: Greek as a Case Study

2011 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 198-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arne O. Mooers ◽  
Panayiotis A. Pappas
Keyword(s):  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Historical Linguistics ◽  
General Mechanism ◽  
Current Frequency ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Frequency Of Use ◽  
Lexical Change ◽  
History Of

AbstractWe review and assess the different ways in which research in evolutionary-theory-inspired biology has influenced research in historical linguistics, and then focus on an evolutionary-theory inspired claim for language change made by Pagel et al. (2007). They report that the more Swadesh-list lexemes are used, the less likely they are to change across 87 Indo-European languages, and posit that frequency-of-use of a lexical item is a separate and general mechanism of language change. We test a corollary of this conclusion, namely that current frequency-of-use should predict the amount of change within individual languages through time. We devise a scale of lexical change that recognizes sound change, analogical change and lexical replacement and apply it to cognate pairs on the Swadesh list between Homeric and Modern Greek. Current frequency-of-use only weakly predicts the amount of change within the history of Greek, but amount of change does predict the number of forms across Indo-European. Given that current frequency-of-use and past frequency-of-use may be only weakly correlated for many Swadesh-list lexemes, and given previous research that shows that frequency-of-use can both hinder and facilitate lexical change, we conclude that it is premature to claim that a new mechanism of language change has been discovered. However, we call for more in-depth comparative study of general mechanisms of language change, including further tests of the frequency-of-use hypothesis.

scholarly journals Negative Words Mutate Faster than Positive Words in Lexical Evolution

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua Conrad Jackson ◽  
Kristen A Lindquist ◽  
Ryan Drabble ◽  
Quentin Atkinson ◽  
Joseph Watts
Keyword(s):  
Language Change ◽  
Language Evolution ◽  
Past Research ◽  
Psychological Research ◽  
Macro Level ◽  
European Language ◽  
Online Study ◽  
Affective Science ◽  
Frequency Of Use ◽  
Semantic Properties

A central goal of linguistics is to understand how words evolve over time, and how geographic, demographic, and cognitive variables have influenced this process of evolution. Whereas past research has focused on how macro-level factors like frequency of word usage and borrowing impact lexical evolution, we draw on insights from cognitive and affective science to test whether the valence (positivity-negativity) of concepts explains variation in lexical evolution rate. Using estimates of cognate replacement rates for 200 concepts on an Indo-European language tree spanning 6-10 millennia of language evolution, we find that words for negative concepts (e.g., dirty, bad) evolve more quickly than words for positive concepts (e.g., clean, good). In a large online study, we find that people are more likely to choose to replace words for negative concepts than positive concepts. These effects hold controlling for frequency of use, borrowing, and other semantic properties. Our findings suggest that the valance of concepts affects micro-scale processes of guided variation, which scales up to produce macro-level patterns of lexical evolution. This process informs linguistics research on language change and psychological research on the affective and cognitive properties of lexical semantics.

Urbanization and Language Change in Vietnam: Evidence from a Rural Community in Hanoi

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cam Lan Trinh ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Rural Communities ◽  
Rural Community ◽  
Quantitative Methods ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Speech Community ◽  
Social Variables ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Demographic Groups ◽  
Frequency Of Use ◽  
Social And Cultural Factors

Language change and contact in Vietnam has recently intensified among some demographic groups. As such, certain sociolinguistic patterns help to describe these changes in language and society. This study is aimed at observing and measuring dialect change in Vietnam influenced by urbanization, with evidence from a rural community in Hanoi, a speech community in Xuan Canh commune, Dong Anh district. The study investigates the ways in which dialect change in this region has developed according to specific social and cultural factors. The Xuan Canh speech community evidences a narrowing usage of local variants. For its method, the study employs fieldwork, and subsequent quantitative methods to aid in the analysis. The data set includes 34 informants, randomly selected, which were categorized into certain social variables. The study also released 34 questionnaires, 11 recorded files of natural speech, from which emerged two sets of 34 recorded files of word lists and a text. The results indicate a gradual reduction in the frequency of use of local variants, a decrease in the number of lexical forms with rural characteristics, and an increase in certain types of urban variants. This trend can be seen by observing changing social variables sensitive to urbanization, such as youths, officials, students, and hence people who have out-community communication scope. Here, the quantitative correlations prove statistically significant. The state of dialect change in this community thus signifies a phenomenon common to Vietnamese rural communities under the effect of the urbanization; that is, a tendency following language urbanization in Vietnam.

scholarly journals Brevity is not always a virtue in primate communication

2010 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruna M. Bezerra ◽  
Antonio S. Souto ◽  
Andrew N. Radford ◽  
Gareth Jones
Keyword(s):  
Vocal Communication ◽  
Animal Communication ◽  
Common Marmoset ◽  
Primate Species ◽  
Human Language ◽  
Costs And Benefits ◽  
Coding Efficiency ◽  
Frequency Of Use ◽  
In The Wild ◽  
The Law

Semple et al . (Semple et al. in press, Biol. Lett. ( doi:10.1098/rsbl.2009.1062 )) argued that the ‘law of brevity’ (an inverse relationship between word length and frequency of use) applies not only to human language but also to vocal signalling in non-human primates, because coding efficiency is paramount in both situations. We analysed the frequency of use of signals of different duration in the vocal repertoires of two Neotropical primate species studied in the wild—the common marmoset ( Callithrix jacchus ) and the golden-backed uakari ( Cacajao melanocephalus ). The key prediction of the law of brevity was not supported in either species: although the most frequently emitted calls were relatively brief, they were not the shortest signals in the repertoire. The costs and benefits associated with signals of different duration must be appreciated to understand properly their frequency of use. Although relatively brief vocal signals may be favoured by natural selection in order to minimize energetic costs, the very briefest signals may be ambiguous, contain reduced information or be difficult to detect or locate, and may therefore be selected against. Analogies between human language and vocal communication in animals can be misleading as a basis for understanding frequency of use, because coding efficiency is not the only factor of importance in animal communication, and the costs and benefits associated with different signal durations will vary in a species-specific manner.

Syntax and Contact-Induced Language Change

2020 ◽  
pp. 122-154
Author(s):  
Malcolm Ross
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Language Shift ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Frequency Of Use ◽  
The Social ◽  
Before And After ◽  
The Difference

The chapter examines contact-induced change in grammatical constructions. Scholars know of only a few cases where evidence is available of both (i) the social context of constructional change and (ii) the grammars of the copying language before and after change and the model language during the change. Most examples are drawn from two European languages which largely fulfil these conditions. Contact-induced constructional change occurs either through bilingualism or through rapid language shift. Bilingually induced change is exemplified by Colloquial Upper Sorbian, rapid language shift by rural Irish English. Four degrees of change are identified: increased frequency of use, change in function, constructional calquing and metatypy. The chapter then discusses the mechanisms and social contexts of constructional change and compares bilingually induced and shift-induced change, leading to the observation that metatypy is restricted to bilingually induced change. In other respects both kinds of change have similar effects. This means that contact-induced change in grammatical constructions serves to diagnose the difference between bilingually induced change and rapid language shift only in rather rare instances.

Processing latencies of competing forms in analogical levelling as evidence of frequency effects on entrenchment in ongoing language change

2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 571-600
Author(s):  
Anne Krause-Lerche
Keyword(s):  
High Frequency ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Frequency Effects ◽  
Current State ◽  
Linguistic Unit ◽  
Frequency Of Use ◽  
Repeated Use ◽  
Behavioural Tests

AbstractThe reason which is generally given in the usage-based literature to account for the retention of irregularity in high frequency items during analogical change isentrenchment: a frequently occurring irregular linguistic unit resists analogical levelling because it is highly entrenched in speakers’ mental lexicons through its repeated use. Although previous research similarly suggests that the entrenchment of irregular and regularised forms competing during analogical levelling should be proportional to their frequency of use, evidence for this relation between frequency and entrenchment comes exclusively from corpus-based studies; what is missing, therefore, are behavioural tests contrasting the competing innovative and conservative forms. The present paper aims to provide converging evidence for an entrenchment-based explanation of frequency patterns in analogical change on the basis of data obtained from an experiment in which participants are presented with traditional and analogical variants of a variable currently undergoing analogical levelling. Differences in processing latencies obtained during the experiment are interpreted as differences in entrenchment. The results provide i) evidence in favour of the prevalent entrenchment-based explanation of the conserving effect of frequency in analogical change, and ii) evidence of the current state and spread of the change under investigation.

scholarly journals Momentum in Language Change

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-198 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Stadler ◽  
Richard A. Blythe ◽  
Kenny Smith ◽  
Simon Kirby
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Neutral Model ◽  
Recent Past ◽  
Agent Model ◽  
Frequency Of Use ◽  
Linguistic Conventions ◽  
Multi Agent ◽  
High Degree

Like other socially transmitted traits, human languages undergo cultural evolution. While humans can replicate linguistic conventions to a high degree of fidelity, sometimes established conventions get replaced by new variants, with the gradual replacement following the trajectory of an s-shaped curve. Although previous modelling work suggests that only a bias favoring the replication of new linguistic variants can reliably reproduce the dynamics observed in language change, the source of this bias is still debated. In this paper we compare previous accounts with a momentum-based selection account of language change, a replicator-neutral model where the popularity of a variant is modulated by its momentum, i.e. its change in frequency of use in the recent past. We present results from a multi-agent model that are characteristic of language change, in particular by exhibiting spontaneously generated s-shaped transitions that do not require externally triggered actuation. We discuss several empirical questions raised by our model, pertaining to both momentum-based selection as well as other biases and pressures which have been suggested to influence language change.

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