Linguistics and English Language

Language evolution seminar

Speaker: Marieke Schouwstra (CLE, University of Edinburgh)

Title: Basic word order: Improvisation + Interaction = Conventions

Abstract: There is increasing recognition that both individual and cultural processes play a role in the evolution of language, but it is not clear how these interact. Silent gesture, an experimental paradigm in which adult hearing participants describe events using only their hands, can help us discover individual word order biases that play a role when no conventional communication system is in place. When people improvise to convey information in this way, the constituent orders they produce show variability that is dependent on the semantic properties of the meaning to be conveyed. Conventional languages, by contrast, are typically more regular.

Understanding the transition from improvised variability to conventionalised regularity is a major goal of language evolution research. I will briefly report some of the results of my British Academy postdoc fellowship, showing experimental data on the emergence of word order conventions in the lab, and naturalistic data from Nicaraguan Sign Language. Together, these two sources of evidence show that word order conventions can emerge relatively quickly in interaction, but traces of meaning-dependent variability can remain, and eventually interact with conventions of the (emerging) language.

In the last part of my talk I will give a preview of new experimental work that will be part of our ESRC grant.

Contact

Seminars are organised by the Centre for Language Evolution

Andres Karjus

Centre for Language Evolution

Aug 27 2019 -

Language evolution seminar

2019-08-27: Basic word order: Improvisation + Interaction = Conventions

Room 1.20, Dugald Stewart Building, 3 Charles Street, Edinburgh, EH8 9AD