Logical Complexity in Morphological Learning: effects of structure and null/overt affixation on learning paradigms

Pertsova, Katya

doi:10.3765/bls.v38i0.3343

Cited by 10 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 9 publications

(8 reference statements)

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“…Russian learners show faster learning of the diminutive compared to Serbian learners (Savickienė, Kempe, & Brooks, ; Seva et al, ). While systematic morphological patterns are typically learned faster and with fewer errors than languages (MacWhinney, ; Pertsova, ; Slobin, ), these systematic patterns may help the learner find the more general morphological structure of the native language. This idea is also capitalized in Albright and Hayes' () model of morphology learning, in which the learner searches for “Islands of Reliability,” small cases where rules appear to be exceptionless.…”

Section: Morphophonologymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example, languages are more likely to show syncretism in the dual compared to the singular. Several learning studies have shown support for the organizational structure of syncretism as a way of supporting learning (Finley & Wiemers, 2015;Pertsova, 2011Pertsova, , 2012. When syncretism resulted in the neutralization of a category, participants were more likely to learn the morphological endings of the language than when syncretism resulted in no category neutralization (Finley & Wiemers, 2015).…”

Section: Morphological Categories and Inflectional Paradigmsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Cognitive and linguistic biases in morphology learning

Finley

2018

WIRES Cognitive Science

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Morphology is the study of the relationship between form and meaning. The study of morphology involves understanding the rules and processes that underlie word formation, including the use and productivity of affixes, and the systems that create novel word forms. The present review explores these processes by examining the cognitive components that contribute to typological regularities among morphological systems across the world's language. The review will focus on research in morpheme segmentation, the suffixing preference, acquisition of morphophonology, and acquiring morphological categories and inflectional paradigms. The review will highlight research in a range of areas of linguistics, from child language acquisition, to computational modeling, to adult language learning experiments. In order to best understand the cognitive biases that shape morphological learning, a broad, interdisciplinary approach must be taken. This article is categorized under: Linguistics > Linguistic Theory Linguistics > Language Acquisition Psychology > Language.

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Section: Morphophonologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Morphological Categories and Inflectional Paradigmsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cognitive and linguistic biases in morphology learning

Finley

2018

WIRES Cognitive Science

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“…The implications of these results are manifold. First, they ratify the relevance of naturalness and semantic similarity in grammatical (and morphological) architecture (Jakobson 1936;Bierwisch 1967;Baerman et al 2005;Pertsova 2014), a fact which has been recently challenged. Thus, for example, (Blevins forthcoming) suggests that "the contrast between 'natural' and 'unnatural' classes appears to reflect a priori assumptions about descriptive 'economy' and 'naturalness' which have never been shown to be relevant to language structure, acquisition or use."…”

Section: A Naturalness Gradient In Paradigmatic Splitsmentioning

confidence: 91%

Naturalness is gradient in morphological paradigms: Evidence from positional splits

Herce¹,

Saldana²,

Mansfield³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Agreement markers that refer to the same feature or argument tend to be found in the same position (e.g., all subject agreement markers as suffixes, all object agreement markers as prefixes). However, little is known about the exceptions to this trend: cases where different values of the same feature are marked in different positions in the word (i.e., positional splits). In this study, we explore the positional properties of subject and object person-number agreement markers in a phylogenetically diverse sample of 227 languages. We find that the recurrence of a positional split is proportional to its degree of naturalness, that is, to the amount of shared feature values amongst the forms with the same positional arrangement. Natural patterns (e.g., where prefixal forms all share SG and suffixal forms all share PL) are over-represented in natural languages compared to a random baseline. The most unnatural patterns are underrepresented, and splits with an intermediate level of unnaturalness occur at around chance levels. We hypothesise that this graded bias for naturalness is grounded in a preference for morphological similarity amongst semantically similar forms during language learning and transmission. To test this hypothesis we conducted two online artificial language learning experiments where we trained and tested participants on person-number verbal agreement paradigms of different sizes with positional splits of different degrees of naturalness. We found that their relative learnability is also gradient (proportional to the amount of meaning overlap), thus matching the observed cross-linguistic tendencies. Our findings support the notion that semantic similarity shapes the evolution and transmission of morphological structure and that it does so in a gradient way.

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“…Although the literature exploring a bias toward similarity-based structure in language learning has long focused on words (and in particular on content words), such a bias could also be at play during the learning of morphological paradigms (Johnson et al, 2021;Maldonado & Culbertson, 2021;Nevins, 2015;Nevins et al, 2015;Pertsova, 2014).…”

Section: Morphological Learningmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…(Cysouw, 2003;Pertsova, 2007). There is a growing body of literature which aims to explain this cross-linguistic tendency towards naturalness from constraints in language learning (Johnson, Gao, Smith, Rabagliati, & Culbertson, 2021;Maldonado & Culbertson, 2021;Nevins, 2015;Nevins, Rodrigues, & Tang, 2015;Noyer, 1992;Pertsova, 2011Pertsova, , 2014. These studies suggest that adults find it easier to learn patterns of syncretism with shared values.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

More or Less Unnatural: Semantic Similarity Shapes the Learnability and Cross-Linguistic Distribution of Unnatural Syncretism in Morphological Paradigms

Saldana¹,

Herce²,

Bickel³

2022

Preprint

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Morphological systems often reuse the same forms in different functions, creating what is known as syncretism. While syncretism varies greatly, certain cross-linguistic tendencies are apparent. Patterns where all syncretic forms share a morphological feature value (e.g., first person, or plural number) are most common cross-linguistically, and this preference is mirrored in results from learning experiments. While this suggests a general bias towards natural (featurally homogeneous) over unnatural (featurally heterogeneous) patterns, little is yet known about gradients in learnability and distributions of different kinds of unnatural patterns. In this paper we assess apparent cross-linguistic asymmetries between different types of unnatural patterns in person-number verbal agreement paradigms and test their learnability in an artificial language learning experiment. We find that the cross-linguistic recurrence of unnatural patterns of syncretism in person-number paradigms is proportional to the amount of shared feature values (i.e., similarity) amongst the syncretic forms. Our experimental results further suggest that the learnability of syncretic patterns also mirrors the paradigm's degree of feature-value similarity. We propose that this gradient in learnability reflects a general bias towards similarity-based structure in morphological learning, which previous literature has shown to play a crucial role in word learning as well as in category and concept learning more generally. Rather than a dichotomous natural/unnatural distinction, our results thus support a more nuanced view of (un)naturalness in morphological paradigms and suggest that a preference for similarity-based structure during language learning might shape the worldwide transmission and typological distribution of patterns of syncretism.

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Logical Complexity in Morphological Learning: effects of structure and null/overt affixation on learning paradigms

Cited by 10 publications

References 9 publications

Cognitive and linguistic biases in morphology learning

Cognitive and linguistic biases in morphology learning

Naturalness is gradient in morphological paradigms: Evidence from positional splits

More or Less Unnatural: Semantic Similarity Shapes the Learnability and Cross-Linguistic Distribution of Unnatural Syncretism in Morphological Paradigms

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