Using language invention to teach typology and cross-linguistic universals

2020 ◽  
pp. 86-106
Author(s):  
Matt Pearson
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Linguistic Variation ◽  
Structural Parameter ◽  
Group Project ◽  
Natural Languages ◽  
Language Typology ◽  
Language Students ◽  
Pie Chart

This chapter outlines a group project where students learn about language typology by creating a naturalistic constructed language. Students learn about cross-linguistic variation in natural languages (in areas such as phoneme inventory, word order, and case alignment), and then determine which grammatical properties their invented language will have. Decisions are made at random by spinning a wheel. Attached to the wheel is a pie chart, where the size of each slice represents the percentage of the world’s languages possessing a given setting for some structural parameter or combination of parameters. Crucially, each decision constrains subsequent decisions in accordance with known implicational universals. For instance, in determining whether the language has prepositions or postpositions, the pie chart is adjusted based on the order of verb and object in the language, as decided by a previous spin of the wheel.

scholarly journals The role of case marking and word order in cross-linguistic structural priming in late L2 acquisition

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Merel Muylle ◽  
Bernolet Sarah ◽  
Robert Hartsuiker
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Language Variation ◽  
Structural Priming ◽  
Artificial Language ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Learning Paradigm ◽  
Natural Languages ◽  
Case Marking

Several studies found cross-linguistic structural priming with various language combinations. Here, we investigated the role of two important domains of language variation: case marking and word order. We varied these features in an artificial language (AL) learning paradigm, using three different AL versions in a between-subjects design. Priming was assessed between Dutch (no case marking, SVO word order) and a) a baseline version with SVO word order, b) a case marking version, and c) a version with SOV word order. Similar within- language and cross-linguistic priming was found in all versions for transitive sentences, indicating that cross-linguistic structural priming was not hindered. In contrast, for ditransitive sentences we found similar within-language priming for all versions, but no cross-linguistic priming. The finding that cross-linguistic priming is possible between languages that vary in morphological marking or word order, is compatible with studies showing cross-linguistic priming between natural languages that differ on these dimensions.

UG or not UG, that is the question: a reply to Clahsen and Muysken

1987 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean duPlessis ◽  
Doreen Solin ◽  
Lisa Travis ◽  
Lydia White
Keyword(s):  
Adult Learners ◽  
Learning Strategies ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Additional Data ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Natural Languages ◽  
German Word ◽  
Germanic Languages

In a recent paper, Clahsen and Muysken (1986) argue that adult second lan guage (L2) learners no longer have access to Universal Grammar (UG) and acquire the L2 by means of learning strategies and ad hoc rules. They use evidence from adult L2 acquisition of German word order to argue that the rules that adults use are not natural language rules. In this paper, we argue that this is not the case. We explain properties of Germanic word order in terms of three parameters (to do with head position, proper government and adjunc tion). We reanalyse Clahsen and Muysken's data in terms of these parameters and show that the stages that adult learners go through, the errors that they make and the rules that they adopt are perfectly consistent with a UG incor porating such parameters. We suggest that errors are the result of some of the parameters being set inappropriately for German. The settings chosen are nevertheless those of existing natural languages. We also discuss additional data, from our own research on the acquisition of German and Afrikaans, which support our analysis of adult L2 acquisition of Germanic languages.

Definiteness in Czech

1998 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 567-596
Author(s):  
George M. Cummins III
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Formal Language ◽  
Initial Position ◽  
Natural Languages ◽  
Expressive Speech

Definiteness, a subcategory of nominal determination, is a universal of natural languages. Languages lacking an overt article, such as Czech, mark definiteness using various discourse-anchored signals, such as word order and intonation. In sentence-initial position, bare NPs are definite. For discourse-anchored definite NPs in other sentence positions (these include post-rhematic themes as well as retrieved or reevaluated entities from remote discourse) and NPs in expressive speech, Czech uses a deictically neutral determiner ten 'this, that; the' for definite NPs. The resultant NP with determiner may correspond to articled or demonstrative-modified NPs in articled languages; the categories are fluid. In both colloquial and formal language ten is developing article-like functions.

scholarly journals From improvisation to learning: how naturalness and systematicity shape language evolution

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yasamin Motamedi ◽  
Lucie Wolters ◽  
Danielle Naegeli ◽  
Simon Kirby ◽  
Marieke Schouwstra
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Cognitive Biases ◽  
Language Evolution ◽  
Direct Object ◽  
Natural Languages ◽  
Gesture Studies ◽  
Event Order ◽  
Linguistic Backgrounds ◽  
Learning Event

Silent gesture studies, in which hearing participants from different linguistic backgrounds produce gestures to communicate events, have been used to test hypotheses about the cognitive biases that govern cross-linguistic word order preferences. In particular, the differential use of SOV and SVO order to communicate, respectively, extensional events (where the direct object exists independently of the event; e.g., girl throws ball) and intensional events (where the meaning of the direct object is potentially dependent on the verb; e.g., girl thinks of ball), has been suggested to represent a natural preference, demonstrated in improvisation contexts. However, natural languages tend to prefer systematic word orders, where a single order is used regardless of the event being communicated. We present a series of studies that investigate ordering preferences for SOV and SVO orders using an online forced-choice experiment, where participants select orders for different events i) in the absence of conventions and ii) after learning event-order mappings in different frequencies in a regularisation experiment. Our results show that natural ordering preferences arise in the absence of conventions, replicating previous findings from production experiments. In addition, we show that participants regularise the input they learn in the manual modality in two ways, such that, while the preference for systematic order patterns increases through learning, it exists in competition with the natural ordering preference, that conditions order on the semantics of the event. Using our experimental data in a computational model of cultural transmission, we show that this pattern is expected to persist over generations, suggesting that we should expect to see evidence of semantically-conditioned word order variability in at least some languages.

Displacement in Syntax

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Klaus Abels
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Morphological Changes ◽  
The Other ◽  
Strong Interactions ◽  
Natural Languages ◽  
Object Position ◽  
Complex Interactions ◽  
Clear Cases ◽  
Canonical Position

Displacement is a ubiquitous phenomenon in natural languages. Grammarians often speak of displacement in cases where the rules for the canonical word order of a language lead to the expectation of finding a word or phrase in a particular position in the sentence whereas it surfaces instead in a different position and the canonical position remains empty: ‘Which book did you buy?’ is an example of displacement because the noun phrase ‘which book’, which acts as the grammatical object in the question, does not occur in the canonical object position, which in English is after the verb. Instead, it surfaces at the beginning of the sentence and the object position remains empty. Displacement is often used as a diagnostic for constituent structure because it affects only (but not all) constituents. In the clear cases, displaced constituents show properties associated with two distinct linear and hierarchical positions. Typically, one of these two positions c-commands the other and the displaced element is pronounced in the c-commanding position. Displacement also shows strong interactions with the path between the empty canonical position and the position where the element is pronounced: one often encounters morphological changes along this path and evidence for structural placement of the displaced constituent, as well as constraints on displacement induced by the path. The exact scope of displacement as an analytically unified phenomenon varies from theory to theory. If more then one type of syntactic displacement is recognized, the question of the interaction between movement types arises. Displacement phenomena are extensively studied by syntacticians. Their enduring interest derives from the fact that the complex interactions between displacement and other aspects of syntax offer a powerful probe into the inner workings and architecture of the human syntactic faculty.

Fronting, dislocation, and the syntactic role of discourse-related features

2011 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Silvio Cruschina
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Phrase Structure ◽  
Linguistic Variation ◽  
Contrastive Focus ◽  
Syntactic Features

This paper focuses on the syntactic role of the features related to discourse and information structure. It is argued that information-structure notions are encoded in syntax as syntactic features projecting their own phrase structure, and are fundamental in accounting for cross-linguistic variation. The word order alternations and syntactic operations which are strictly dependent on the discourse/informational properties of the sentence, as well as the different grammatical properties characterizing different information-structure categories, can all be related to the syntactic role of discourse-related features, the functional projections with which they are associated, and the type of movement that these features trigger. Under this view, this paper offers an analysis of fronting and dislocation phenomena in Romance, which entails that variation with respect to these processes is correlated to the activation and to the attraction properties of the functional projections encoding information-structure distinctions. Keywords: discourse-related features; information structure; functional projections; topic; informational focus; contrastive focus; Romance; Sicilian

scholarly journals Linguistic system and sociolinguistic environment as competing factors in linguistic variation: A typological approach

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kaius Sinnemäki
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Population Size ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Relative Effect ◽  
Complex Case ◽  
Linguistic Variation ◽  
Speech Community ◽  
Second Language Speakers ◽  
Generalized Linear Mixed Effects ◽  
The One

AbstractThis paper brings together typological and sociolinguistic approaches to language variation. Its main aim is to evaluate the relative effect of language internal and external factors on the number of cases in the world’s languages. I model word order as a language internal predictor; it is well-known that, for instance, languages with verb-final word order (that is, languages in which both nominal arguments precede the main lexical verb) tend to develop complex case systems more often than languages with SVO word order do. I model population size and the proportion of second language speakers in the speech community as sociolinguistic predictors; these factors have been suggested recently to influence the distribution of the number of cases in the world’s languages. Modelling the data with generalized linear mixed effects modelling suggests an interaction between the number of cases, word order, and the proportion of second language speakers on the one hand, and between the number of cases, word order, and population size, on the other. This kind of complex interactions have not been previously reported in typological research wherefore they call for more complex explanations than previously suggested for cross-linguistic variation.

scholarly journals The impact of information structure on the emergence of differential object marking: an experimental study

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shira Tal ◽  
Kenny Smith ◽  
Jennifer Culbertson ◽  
Eitan Grossman ◽  
Inbal Arnon
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Alternative Hypothesis ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Language Typology ◽  
Differential Object Marking ◽  
New Information ◽  
Object Marking ◽  
The Impact

Many languages exhibit differential object marking (DOM), where only certain types of grammatical objects are marked with morphological case. Traditionally, it has been claimed that DOM arises as a way to prevent ambiguity by marking objects that might otherwise be mistaken for subjects (e.g., animate objects). While some recent experimental work supports this account (Fedzechkina et al., 2012), research on language typology suggests at least one alternative hypothesis. In particular, DOM may instead arise as a way of marking objects that are atypical from the point of view of information structure. According to this account, rather than being marked to avoid ambiguity, objects are marked when they are given (already familiar in the discourse) rather than new. Here, we experimentally investigate this hypothesis using two artificial language learning experiments. We find that information structure impacts participants’ object-marking, but in an indirect way: atypical information structure leads to a change of word order, which then triggers increased object marking. Interestingly, this staged process of change is compatible with documented cases of DOM emergence (Iemmolo, 2013). We argue that this process is driven by two cognitive tendencies. First, a tendency to place discourse given information before new information, and second, a tendency to mark non-canonical word order. Taken together, our findings provide corroborating evidence for the role of information structure in the emergence of DOM systems.

scholarly journals Aspectos da Variação Sintática e Línguas Pano (Aspects of Syntactic Variation and Panoan Languages)

2006 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 153
Author(s):  
Jaqueline Dos Santos Peixoto
Keyword(s):  
Linguistic Variation ◽  
Sentence Structure ◽  
Natural Languages ◽  
Syntactic Variation ◽  
Internal Variation

O tema de nosso trabalho é a variação sintática, considerada em termos intra e interlingüísticos. O estudo da variação interna a uma língua e sua comparação com outras línguas podem fornecer evidências para as propriedades da estrutura das sentenças nas línguas naturais. A descoberta dessas propriedades pode explicar as diferenças e semelhanças existentes entre as línguas relacionadas à arquitetura da sentença. Para tanto, examinamos as características de projeção dos núcleos funcionais das línguas amazônicas Marubo e do Matsés (família Pano).PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Variação Lingüística. Sintaxe. Gramática. Línguas Pano.ABSTRACTThe theme of this paper is the syntactic variation, considered in intra and interlinguistic terms. Studies on internal variation of a language and languages comparison can give evidence for the properties of the sentence structure in natural languages. The discovery of these properties can explain the differencesand similarities related to sentence structure in these languages. Such as, we examine the characteristics of the projection of functional heads in two Amazonian languages: Marubo and Matsés (Panoan family).KEYWORDS: Linguistic variation. Syntax. Grammar. Panoan languages.

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