Language evolution seminar

Speaker: Alexander Martin (University of Edinburgh)

Title: Biases in phonological processing and learning

Abstract: During speech perception, listeners are biased by a great number of factors, including cognitive limitations such as memory and attention and linguistic limitations such as their native language. In this talk, I will present my PhD work addressing two of these factors: processing bias during word recognition, and learning bias during the transmission process. These factors are combinatorial and can, over time, affect the way languages evolve. First, I will detail a study focusing on the importance of phonological features in word recognition, at both the perceptual and lexical levels, and discuss how speakers integrate information from these different sources. Second, I will present a series of experiments addressing the question of learning bias and its implications for the linguistic typology. Specifically, I will present artificial language learning experiments showing better learning of the typologically common pattern of vowel harmony compared to the exceedingly rare, but logically equivalent pattern of vowel disharmony. I will also present a simple simulation of the transmission of these patterns over time, showing better survival of harmonic patterns compared to disharmonic ones.

Contact

Seminars are organised by the Centre for Language Evolution

Svenja Wagner

Centre for Language Evolution