Kielten ja murteiden evoluutio ja laskennalliset tekniikat (tulossa)

Kaj Syrjäsen suomen kielen alaan kuuluva väitös tarkastettiin Tampereen yliopistossa perjantaina 6. elokuuta 2021. Vastaväittäjänä toimi tohtori Annemarie Verkerk Saarlandin yliopistosta ja kustoksena dosentti Unni Leino. Kaj Syrjänen: Quantitative Language Evolution. Case studies in Finnish dialects and Uralic languages. Tampere University Dissertations 433. Tampere: Tampereen yliopisto 2021. Kirja on luettavissa osoitteessa: http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-03-2004-1.

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

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.

The Hierarchical Organization of Syntax

Hierarchies are the backbones of complex systems and their analysis allows for a deeper understanding of their structure and how they evolve. We consider languages to be also complex adaptive systems. Hence, we analyzed the hierarchical organization of historical syntactic networks from German that were created from a corpus of texts from the 11th to 17th centuries. We tracked the emergence of syntactic structures in these networks and mapped them to specific communicative needs. We named these emerging structures communicative hierarchies. We hypothesise that the communicative needs of speakers are the organizational force of syntax. We propose that the emergence of these multiple communicative hierarchies is what shapes syntax, and that these hierarchies are the prerequisite to the Zipf's law. The emergence of communicative hierarchies indicates that the objective of language evolution is not only to increase the efficiency of transferring information. Language is also evolving to increase our capacity to communicate more sophisticated abstractions as we advance as a species.

An evolutionary account of impairment of self in cognitive disorders

Recent research has proposed that certain aspects of psychosis, as experienced in e.g. schizophrenia (SCH), but also aspects of other cognitive conditions, such as autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and synesthesia, can be related to a shattered sense of the notion of self. In this paper, our goal is to show that altered processing of the self can be attributed to an abnormal functioning of cortico-striatal brain networks supporting, among other, one key human distinctive cognitive ability, namely, cross-modality, which plays multiple roles in human cognition and language. Specifically, our hypothesis is that this cognitive mechanism sheds light both on some basic aspects of the minimal self and on some aspects related to higher forms of the self, such as the narrative self. We further link the atypical functioning in these conditions to some recent evolutionary changes in our species, specifically, an atypical presentation of human self-domestication (HSD) features. In doing so, we also lean on previous work concerning the link between cognitive disorders and language evolution under the effects of HSD. We further show that this approach can unify both linguistic and non-linguistic symptoms of these conditions through deficits in the notion of self. Our considerations provide further support for the hypothesis that SCH and ASD are diametrically opposed cognitive conditions, as well for the hypothesis that their etiology is associated with recent human evolution, leading to a deeper understanding of the causes and symptoms of these disorders, and providing new cues, which can be used for an earlier and more accurate diagnostics.

Шошоолог: этноним и этническая история

Introduction. This article under takes a study of the clan name Shoshoolog (Šošōlog) in the context of ethnogenesis and ethnic history of the Mongolic and Turkic peoples of Inner Asia and Siberia. New historical and ethnographical data, including the evidence of ethnonymics as a part of the ethnic history of the Mongolic and Turkic peoples of the region will contribute to the knowledge of the migration and settlement history of the Shoshoolog people. The study aims at examining the etymology of the term šošōloγ, the area where it wasspread and theways of itsspread. Data and methods. The authors have taken into account written documents, ethnographical and folklore sources that contained references to the ethnonym in question. The written sources of the period between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, mainly in Russian, such as Cossacks’ otpiski (reports), and, more recent, travel and census reports, contain various forms of the ethnonym, often incorrectly spelled but still of interest as evidence pointing at the settlement areas of the ethnic group, as well as a source for linguistic speculation. The ethnographical sources include references to the ethnic group in question based on the legends and sagas shedding light on the people’s origin and settlement patterns both in the Baikal area and in Mongolia. The folklore texts written down by N. N. Poppe, S. P. Baldaev, etc. Include the stories of the Shoshoolog as a Buryat clan with a strong Shamanic background, as well as various forms of the ethnonym. Granted the available knowledge of the historical patterns in the language evolution, the orthographical forms of the ethnonym contained in different records were used as the data for further phonetical reconstructions and localizations of the ethnonym’s phonetic shape in terms of chronological and geographical dimensions. This data, alongside other material on the ethnonymics and onomastics of Mongolic and Turkic peoples, contributes to the linguistic part of the database in the field. Conclusions. A comparative analysis of ethnonymic evidence contained in a variety of sources examined resulted in phonetic reconstructions of the ethnonym under study to finally shed new light on its etymology, as well as to project further developments of its phonetic shape.

Proto-Language as a Structurer and Enhancer of Perception

The evolution of the capacity for language remains a contested and important subject. Newer approaches consider language evolution to be a protracted and mosaic process, with selection operating in different contexts through multiple drivers. This research examines two potential factors in language evolution: cognitive-structuring functions of language, and non-arbitrariness (iconicity). It is based on the hypothesis that language exerts powerful facilitative effects on cognition, which may provide an additional adaptive advantage to early proto-language. Iconicity meanwhile may offer a foothold for the emergence of semantics by providing an innate link between sound and meaning. This study investigated both aspects through an online game in which participants had to categorise novel species of aliens. Results provided evidence for both cognitive structuring due to language, and iconicity, adding credence to the suggestion that both may have played important roles in language evolution.

Proto-Language as a Structurer and Enhancer of Perception

The evolution of the capacity for language remains a contested and important subject. Newer approaches consider language evolution to be a protracted and mosaic process, with selection operating in different contexts through multiple drivers. This research examines two potential factors in language evolution: cognitive-structuring functions of language, and non-arbitrariness (iconicity). It is based on the hypothesis that language exerts powerful facilitative effects on cognition, which may provide an additional adaptive advantage to early proto-language. Iconicity meanwhile may offer a foothold for the emergence of semantics by providing an innate link between sound and meaning. This study investigated both aspects through an online game in which participants had to categorise novel species of aliens. Results provided evidence for both cognitive structuring due to language, and iconicity, adding credence to the suggestion that both may have played important roles in language evolution.

Aspects of change in the syntax of Māori - A corpus-based study

<p>In the current climate of Māori language revitalisation, there is ample anecdotal evidence to suggest that not only the vocabulary, but also the syntax of modern Māori is markedly different from its traditional roots, and that it shows significant influence from English syntax. However, syntactic change in Māori has not hitherto been rigorously studied. This thesis aims to provide material evidence of change in Māori syntax, through a corpus-based study of grammatical change in te reo Māori over the period of contact with English. My methodology involved the compilation and comparison of two synchronic corpora representing the two ends of the contact period to provide a diachronic perspective on the language. Each corpus consists of approximately 102,000 running words of material written originally in Māori. The early corpus contains items published pre-1900. The modern material was written post-1990. The thesis is not only an exploration of the possibility of documenting syntactic change through the use of such corpora, but also tests whether it is possible to do this using corpora significantly smaller than the multi-million word corpora typical in corpus linguistics. The scope of this methodology is tested by examining three distinct types of grammatical features: a grammatical particle (the preposition mō), a pair of semantically related lexemes that appear to be undergoing a process of grammaticalisation (the verbs taea and āhei), and a widespread grammatical construction (certain types of relative clauses). In each instance, the two corpora are compared for features such as the frequency of occurrence, the associated constructions, and the contexts of use. In relation to the methodological questions, the thesis concludes that while these corpora are too small to provide adequate data on individual lexical items like taea and āhei, the methodology did make it possible to document change in the other, relatively high-frequency grammatical features. The thesis also raises the questions of whether the changes identified result from the direct adoption of English usages and constructions, whether they result from insufficient exposure to traditional Māori as a result of the dominance of English, or whether they are perhaps instead the result of internally-motivated Māori language evolution. This leads to a discussion of the likely implications of the changes documented here for the future of the language and the language community. I argue that acceptance of all such change as natural and unavoidable is likely to be detrimental to the future of te reo Māori.</p>

Aspects of change in the syntax of Māori - A corpus-based study

<p>In the current climate of Māori language revitalisation, there is ample anecdotal evidence to suggest that not only the vocabulary, but also the syntax of modern Māori is markedly different from its traditional roots, and that it shows significant influence from English syntax. However, syntactic change in Māori has not hitherto been rigorously studied. This thesis aims to provide material evidence of change in Māori syntax, through a corpus-based study of grammatical change in te reo Māori over the period of contact with English. My methodology involved the compilation and comparison of two synchronic corpora representing the two ends of the contact period to provide a diachronic perspective on the language. Each corpus consists of approximately 102,000 running words of material written originally in Māori. The early corpus contains items published pre-1900. The modern material was written post-1990. The thesis is not only an exploration of the possibility of documenting syntactic change through the use of such corpora, but also tests whether it is possible to do this using corpora significantly smaller than the multi-million word corpora typical in corpus linguistics. The scope of this methodology is tested by examining three distinct types of grammatical features: a grammatical particle (the preposition mō), a pair of semantically related lexemes that appear to be undergoing a process of grammaticalisation (the verbs taea and āhei), and a widespread grammatical construction (certain types of relative clauses). In each instance, the two corpora are compared for features such as the frequency of occurrence, the associated constructions, and the contexts of use. In relation to the methodological questions, the thesis concludes that while these corpora are too small to provide adequate data on individual lexical items like taea and āhei, the methodology did make it possible to document change in the other, relatively high-frequency grammatical features. The thesis also raises the questions of whether the changes identified result from the direct adoption of English usages and constructions, whether they result from insufficient exposure to traditional Māori as a result of the dominance of English, or whether they are perhaps instead the result of internally-motivated Māori language evolution. This leads to a discussion of the likely implications of the changes documented here for the future of the language and the language community. I argue that acceptance of all such change as natural and unavoidable is likely to be detrimental to the future of te reo Māori.</p>

Animism and Language Evolution

The exact mechanism of the evolution of language remains unknown. One of the central problems in this field is the issue of reliability and deceit that can be characterized in terms of honest signaling theory. Communication systems become vulnerable to dishonesty and deceit when there are conflicting interests between the signaler and receiver. The handicap principle explains how evolution can prevent animals from deceiving each other even if they have a strong incentive to do so. It suggests that the signals must be costly in order to provide accurate and reliable communication between animals. Language-like communication systems, being inherently vulnerable to deception, could only evolve and become evolutionarily stable if they had some mechanisms that can make the communication hard to fake and trustworthy. One of the theories that try to solve the problem of reliability and deception is the ritual/speech coevolution hypothesis. According to this theory, hard-to-fake rituals evolved concurrently with language - by reinforcing trust and solidarity among early humans and preventing deceitful and manipulative behavior within the group. One of the drawbacks of this hypothesis is that the relationship between ritual and speech is too indirect. Rituals could not have a real-time effect on every instance of speech and encompass all aspects of everyday language communication. Therefore they are not efficient enough to provide instant verification mechanisms to guarantee honest communication. It is more likely that the animistic nature of language itself, rather than ritual, was the handicap-like cost that helped to ensure the reliability of language during its origin. The belief in the parallel dimension of animistic spirits emerged concurrently with language as a hard-to-fake attestation mechanism that ensured inviolability of one's speech. The notion that animism emerged because of early behaviorally modern humans’ incoherent and flawed observations about the natural world is unlikely, because it implies a very improbable scenario, that there had been a more coherent and rational pre-animistic period which later degraded to animistic one.