Cross cultural factors in phonological change

ABSTRACTSAnalysis of the vowel/consonant patterns in a world sample of folk songs indicates that some speech sounds vary regularly with certain aspects of social structure. Consonant frequencies shift in relation to technological level: mid stops, fricatives and laterals increase in relative frequency along a scale of productive range. Alteration in the vowel map, on the other hand, seems to be related to cross-cultural differences in sex role. Thus changes in phonology, familiar to the linguist, may be symbolic of and explained by familiar societal phenomena. These suppositions are, it is true, based on the analysis of sung languages and remain to be confirmed for speech. However, the power of expressive style as a general diagnostic of the layout of culture implies that they will be so confirmed, since expressive patterns often turn out to be a sort of heightened and extra-redundant version of everyday behavior. Moreover, collections of recorded song performances provide a world-wide resource of ‘unselfconscious’ and culturally validated language data that is simply unavailable for other kinds of speech activity. (Phonology; variation; expressive (stylistic) function; song style; mode of production and se role; cross-cultural sample.)

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Democracy in context: using a distributional semantic model to study differences in the usage of democracy across languages and countries

Zeitschrift für Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft ◽

10.1007/s12286-020-00472-3 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 14 (4) ◽

pp. 425-459 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Stefan Dahlberg ◽

Sofia Axelsson ◽

Sören Holmberg

Keyword(s):

Natural Habitat ◽

Cross Cultural ◽

Political Support ◽

Text Data ◽

Cross Cultural Differences ◽

Online Source ◽

Language Data ◽

Survey Results ◽

People’S Attitudes ◽

Meaning Theory

AbstractCross-cultural survey research rests upon the assumption that if survey features are kept constant, data will remain comparable across languages, cultures and countries. Yet translating concepts across languages, cultures and political contexts is complicated by linguistic, cultural, normative or institutional discrepancies. Such discrepancies are particularly relevant for complex political concepts such as democracy, where the literature on political support has revealed significant cross-cultural differences in people’s attitudes toward democracy. Recognizing that language, culture and other socio-political variables affect survey results has often been equated with giving up on comparative research and many survey researchers have consequently chosen to simply ignore the issue of comparability and measurement equivalence across languages, cultures and countries. This paper contributes to the debate, using a distributional semantic lexicon, which is a statistical model measuring co-occurrence statistics in large text data. The method is motivated by structuralist meaning theory, stating that words with similar meanings tend to occur in similar contexts, and that contexts shape and define the meanings of words. Compared to other methodological approaches aimed at identifying and measuring cross-cultural discrepancies, this approach enables us to systematically analyze how the concept of democracy is used in its natural habitat. Collecting geo-tagged language data from news and social online source documents this paper descriptively explores varieties in meanings of democracy across a substantial number of languages and countries, and maps ways in which democracy is used among online populations and regions worldwide.

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Cognitive gadgets: A provocative but flawed manifesto

Behavioral and Brain Sciences ◽

10.1017/s0140525x19001134 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 42 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Marco Del Giudice

Keyword(s):

Theory Of Mind ◽

Cultural Differences ◽

Twin Studies ◽

Cross Cultural ◽

Evolutionary Approach ◽

Genetic Inheritance ◽

Double Standards ◽

Cross Cultural Differences ◽

Cherry Picking ◽

Dichotomous Thinking

Abstract The argument against innatism at the heart of Cognitive Gadgets is provocative but premature, and is vitiated by dichotomous thinking, interpretive double standards, and evidence cherry-picking. I illustrate my criticism by addressing the heritability of imitation and mindreading, the relevance of twin studies, and the meaning of cross-cultural differences in theory of mind development. Reaching an integrative understanding of genetic inheritance, plasticity, and learning is a formidable task that demands a more nuanced evolutionary approach.

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