Asymmetric accommodation during interaction leads to the regularisation of linguistic variants

Fehér, Olga; Ritt, Nikolaus; Smith, Kenny

doi:10.1016/j.jml.2019.104036

Cited by 13 publications

(17 citation statements)

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“…From Experiment 1, we might have concluded that interaction and transmission to new learners are mechanisms involved in word order simplification, but Experiment 2 tells us that transmission to new learners is not crucial in this process: when two participants are engaged in prolonged interaction, they will simplify their usage of word order in a similar way. This result is consistent with work on artificial language learning and regularisation through interaction (Fehér et al, 2016;Feher et al, 2019). However, focusing on other work with emerging conventions in silent gesture experiments, we conclude that word order conventions develop differently from, for instance, systematicity in the lexicon (Motamedi et al, 2019).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

“…For example, (Fehér, Wonnacott, & Smith, 2016) trained pairs of participants on an artificial language with variable word order then had them interact; they found that participants were primed by their partners' productions even in artificial languages, and that partly as a result of this reciprocal priming process, pairs of participants rapidly converged on a shared and regular word order, eschewing the word order variation present in their input. This happens even if the change violates other preferences, for instance, for effort reduction (Feher, Ritt, & Smith, 2019).…”

Section: Interactionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The emergence of word order conventions: improvisation, interaction and transmission

Schouwstra¹,

Smith²,

Kirby³

2020

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When people improvise to convey information by using only gesture and no speech (‘silent gesture’), they show language-independent word order preferences: SOV for extensional events (e.g., boy-ball-throw), but SVO for intensional events (e.g., boy-search-ball). Real languages tend not to condition word order on this kind of semantic distinction but instead use the same order irrespective of event type. Word order therefore exemplifies a contrast between naturalness in improvisation and conventionalised regularity in linguistic systems. We present an experimental paradigm in which initially-improvised silent gesture is both used for communication and culturally transmitted through artificial generations of lab participants. In experiments 1 and 2 we investigate the respective contributions of communicative interaction and cultural transmission on natural word order behaviour. We show that both interaction and iterated learning lead to a simplification of the word order regime, and the way in which this unfolds over time is surprisingly similar under the two mechanisms. The resulting dominant word order is mostly SVO, the order of the native language of our participants. In experiment 3, we manipulate the frequency of different semantic event types, and show that this can allow SOV order, rather than SVO order, to conventionalise. Taken together, our experiments demonstrate that where pressures for naturalness and regularity are in conflict, naturalness will give way to regularity as word order becomes conventionalised through repeated usage.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

Section: Interactionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The emergence of word order conventions: improvisation, interaction and transmission

Schouwstra¹,

Smith²,

Kirby³

2020

Preprint

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“…Previous work has suggested that communicative interaction provides a potential context for regularisation of probabilistic unconditioned variation, either by encouraging speakers to drop uninformative features of the language, or through alignment (Fehér, Ritt, & Smith 2017;Klein & Perdue 1997;McWhorter 2001). In Experiment 3, we therefore incorporated a communicative task into the experiment in order to determine whether differences in regularisation across linguistic levels might emerge in this context.…”

Section: Discussion: the Effect Of Linguistic Level On Regularisationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Is regularisation uniform across linguistic levels? Comparing learning and production of unconditioned probabilistic variation in morphology and word order.

Saldana¹,

Smith²,

Kirby³

et al. 2018

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Languages exhibit variation at all linguistic levels, from phonology, to the lexicon, to syntax. Importantly, that variation tends to be (at least partially) conditioned on some aspect of the social or linguistic context. When variation is unconditioned, language learners regularise it, either by removing some or all variants, or by conditioning variant use on context. Previous studies using artificial language learning experiments have documented regularising behaviour in learning of lexical, morphological, and syntactic variation. These studies implicitly assume that regularisation reflects uniform mechanisms and processes across linguistic levels. However, studies on natural language learning and pidginisation suggest that morphological and syntactic variation may be treated differently. In particular, there is evidence that morphological variation may be more susceptible to regularisation (Good 2015;Siegel 2006;Slobin 1986). In this paper we provide the first systematic comparison of the strength of regularisation across these two linguistic levels. In line with previous studies, we find that the presence of a favoured variant can induce different degrees of regularisation. However, when input languages are carefully matched-with comparable initial complexities, and no variant-specific biases-regularisation is comparable across morphology and word order. This is the case both when the task is not explicitly communicative, and when the language must be used for communication with a partner. Overall, our findings suggests a single regularising mechanism at work, with apparent differences among levels likely due to differences in inherent complexity or variant-specific biases.

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“…Configurations that are more likely to be ambiguous may therefore come to be obligatorily marked (cf. the more general process of obligatorification whereby initially probabilistic, pragmaticallyconditioned patterns of variation lose flexibility and become obligatory, Lehmann, 1985;Fehér et al, 2019, or the tendency for initially unconditioned variation to become conditioned on local linguistic context, Smith & Wonnacott, 2010;Smith et al, 2017). Furthermore, it is also worth noting that there are some languages which in fact appear to condition marking on the relative (rather than absolute) animacy of arguments (e.g.…”

Section: Explanations For Differential Case Marking: Efficient Communmentioning

confidence: 99%

Communicative pressures shape language during communication (not learning): Evidence from casemarking in artificial languages

Smith¹,

Culbertson²

2020

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Natural languages are designed for efficient communication. A classic example is Differential Case Marking, when nouns are marked for their grammatical role only if this information cannot be derived from world knowledge (e.g. only atypical objects need to be linguistically marked as objects). Fedzechkina et al. (2012) present experimental evidence from an artificial language learning paradigm suggesting that biases in learning favour Differential Case Marking: learners exposed to a language with optional casemarking restructure the input, using casemarkers more in situations where marking would reduce ambiguity, despite the fact that they never use the artificial language in a communicative task where ambiguity matters. This is surprising given previous studies suggesting that biases in learning favour simplicity and are agnostic with respect to communicative function. We present 3 experiments investigating whether biases for communicatively-efficient Differential Case Marking exist in learning. Contrary to Fedzechkina et al. (2012), we find no evidence for such a bias in learning: participants’ use of case is impervious to the ambiguity of unmarked objects, and modulated by statistical properties of their input, observations which are inconsistent with their hypothesis and better explained by biases early in learning favouring iconicity in the form-meaning mapping, e.g. whereby atypical meanings are associated with atypical forms. However, we find good evidence that participants’ behaviour in actual communicative interaction are driven by efficient communication considerations: in interaction participants exhibited the expected Differential Object Marking pattern. This suggests that languages adapt to communicative efficiency constraints as a result of being used in communication, rather than due to biases in human learning favouring communicatively-efficient languages.

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Asymmetric accommodation during interaction leads to the regularisation of linguistic variants

Cited by 13 publications

References 50 publications

The emergence of word order conventions: improvisation, interaction and transmission

The emergence of word order conventions: improvisation, interaction and transmission

Is regularisation uniform across linguistic levels? Comparing learning and production of unconditioned probabilistic variation in morphology and word order.

Communicative pressures shape language during communication (not learning): Evidence from casemarking in artificial languages

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