Explaining vowel systems: dispersion theory vs natural selection

Vaux, Bert; Samuels, Bridget D.

doi:10.1515/tlr-2014-0028

Cited by 15 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 47 publications

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“…For example, the shift could be a form of phonetic analogy, in which movement in /ae/ along the F2 dimension is mirrored by movement in /ɛ/ because phonetic dimensions are biased towards similar expression across different phonemes (see Wedel, 2006;Winter & Wedel, 2016). Alternatively, the link could perhaps be explained as a consequence of a move towards perceptual dispersal (see Vaux & Samuels, 2015).…”

Section: Overall Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Producing and perceiving the Canadian Vowel Shift: Evidence from a Montreal community

Kettig

Winter

2017

Lang Var Change

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This paper investigates interspeaker variation in the mid and low short vowels of Jewish Montreal English, analyzing the Canadian Shift in both production and perception. In production, we find that young women are leading in the retraction of /æ/ and the lowering and retraction of /ε/. We furthermore find that across speakers, the retraction of /æ/ is correlated with the lowering and retraction of /ε/, providing quantitative evidence that the movements of these two vowels are linked. The trajectory implied by our production data differs from what was reported in Montreal approximately one generation earlier. In contrast to reliable age differences in production, a vowel categorization task shows widespread intergenerational agreement in perception, highlighting a mismatch: in this speech community, there is evidently more systematic variation in production than in perception. We suggest that this is because all individuals are exposed to both innovative and conservative variants and must perceptually accommodate accordingly.

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Section: Overall Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Producing and perceiving the Canadian Vowel Shift: Evidence from a Montreal community

Kettig

Winter

2017

Lang Var Change

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“…The first one, dispersion theory, suggests a causative role for efficient communication. It proposes that sound systems attempt to simultaneously minimize articulatory effort, while maximizing the perceptual distinctiveness of contrasts and the rate of transmission of information (Liljencrants and Lindblom, 1972 ; Flemming, 2001 ; Vaux and Samuels, 2015 ). The other idea is that sound systems tend to make efficient, or economical, use of the dimensions that define sounds in the sounds in the human speech perception systems, speech motor systems, and/or lexical storage (word memory) systems (Martinet, 1939 ; Clements, 2003 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Geometric Constraints on Human Speech Sound Inventories

Dunbar

Dupoux

2016

Front. Psychol.

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We investigate the idea that the languages of the world have developed coherent sound systems in which having one sound increases or decreases the chances of having certain other sounds, depending on shared properties of those sounds. We investigate the geometries of sound systems that are defined by the inherent properties of sounds. We document three typological tendencies in sound system geometries: economy, a tendency for the differences between sounds in a system to be definable on a relatively small number of independent dimensions; local symmetry, a tendency for sound systems to have relatively large numbers of pairs of sounds that differ only on one dimension; and global symmetry, a tendency for sound systems to be relatively balanced. The finding of economy corroborates previous results; the two symmetry properties have not been previously documented. We also investigate the relation between the typology of inventory geometries and the typology of individual sounds, showing that the frequency distribution with which individual sounds occur across languages works in favor of both local and global symmetry.

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“…Our scientific conclusions are as follows. In its simplest form, our model may be seen as a dynamical dispersion theory [31], where repulsive interphoneme forces drive vowel systems toward configurations which maximize contrast. By comparison to a large database of phonemic inventories, and by defining of our own system typology, we have shown that the model captures cross-linguistic relative frequencies of different sounds to within ≈10%, with the exception of the high central vowel /1/.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Repulsive mechanisms are common to all the models above and generate distributions of sounds which are dispersed in vowel space. They are known as dispersion theories [12,31].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Brownian dynamics for the vowel sounds of human language

Burridge

Vaux

2020

Phys. Rev. Research

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We present a model for the evolution of vowel sounds in human languages, in which words behave as Brownian particles diffusing in acoustic space, interacting via the vowel sounds they contain. Interaction forces, derived from a simple model of the language-learning process, are attractive at short range and repulsive at long range. This generates sets of acoustic clusters, each representing a distinct sound, which form patterns with similar statistical properties to real vowel systems. Our formulation may be generalized to account for spontaneous self-actuating shifts in system structure which are observed in real languages, and to combine in one model two previously distinct theories of vowel system structure: dispersion theory, which assumes that vowel systems maximize contrasts between sounds, and quantal theory, according to which nonlinear relationships between articulatory and acoustic parameters are the source of patterns in sound inventories. By formulating the dynamics of vowel sounds using interparticle forces, we also provide a simple unified description of the linguistic notion of push and pull dynamics in vowel systems.

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Explaining vowel systems: dispersion theory vs natural selection

Abstract: We argue that the cross-linguistic distribution of vowel systems is best accounted for by grammar-external forces of learnability operating in tandem with cognitive constraints on phonological computation, as argued for other phonological phenomena by

Cited by 15 publications

References 47 publications

Producing and perceiving the Canadian Vowel Shift: Evidence from a Montreal community

Producing and perceiving the Canadian Vowel Shift: Evidence from a Montreal community

Geometric Constraints on Human Speech Sound Inventories

Brownian dynamics for the vowel sounds of human language

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