Some word order biases from limited brain resources: A mathematical approach

In this paper, we propose a mathematical framework for studying word order optimization. The framework relies on the well-known positive correlation between cognitive cost and the Euclidean distance between the elements (e.g. words) involved in a syntactic link. We study the conditions under which a certain word order is more economical than an alternative word order by proposing a mathematical approach. We apply our methodology to two different cases: (a) the ordering of subject (S), verb (V) and object (O), and (b) the covering of a root word by a syntactic link. For the former, we find that SVO and its symmetric, OVS, are more economical than OVS, SOV, VOS and VSO at least 2/3 of the time. For the latter, we find that uncovering the root word is more economical than covering it at least 1/2 of the time. With the help of our framework, one can explain some Greenbergian universals. Our findings provide further theoretical support for the hypothesis that the limited resources of the brain introduce biases toward certain word orders. Our theoretical findings could inspire or illuminate future psycholinguistics or corpus linguistics studies.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Problems of methodology and explanation in word order universals research

Ever since the publication of Greenberg 1963, word order typologists have attempted to formulate and refine implicational universals of word order so as to characterize the restricted distribution of certain word order patterns, and in some cases have also attempted to develop general principles to explain the existence of those universals

Cultural transmission results in convergence towards colour term universals.

As in biological evolution, multiple forces are involved in cultural evolution. One force is analogous to selection, and acts on differences in the fitness of aspects of culture by influencing who people choose to learn from. Another force is analogous to mutation, and influences how culture changes over time owing to errors in learning and the effects of cognitive biases. Which of these forces need to be appealed to in explaining any particular aspect of human cultures is an open question. We present a study that explores this question empirically, examining the role that the cognitive biases that influence cultural transmission might play in universals of colour naming. In a large-scale laboratory experiment, participants were shown labelled examples from novel artificial systems of colour terms and were asked to classify other colours on the basis of those examples. The responses of each participant were used to generate the examples seen by subsequent participants. By simulating cultural transmission in the laboratory, we were able to isolate a single evolutionary force-the effects of cognitive biases, analogous to mutation-and examine its consequences. Our results show that this process produces convergence towards systems of colour terms similar to those seen across human languages, providing support for the conclusion that the effects of cognitive biases, brought out through cultural transmission, can account for universals in colour naming

Eligibility and inscrutability

The philosophy of intentionality asks questions such as: in virtue of what does a sentence, picture, or mental state represent that the world is a certain way? The subquestion I focus upon here concerns the semantic properties of language: in virtue of what does a name such as ‘London’ refer to something or a predicate such as ‘is large’ apply to some object? This essay examines one kind of answer to this “metasemantic”1 question: interpretationism, instances of which have been proposed by Donald Davidson, David Lewis, and others. I characterize the “twostep” form common to such approaches and briefl y say how two versions described by David Lewis fi t this pattern. Then I describe a fundamental challenge to this approach: a “permutation argument” that contends, by interpretationist lights, there can be no fact of the matter about lexical content (e.g., what individual words refer to). Such a thesis cannot be sustained, so the argument threatens a reductio of interpretationism. In the second part of the article, I will give what I take to be the best interpretationist response to the inscrutability paradox: David Lewis’s appeal to the differential “eligibility” of semantic theories. I contend that, given an independently plausible formulation of interpretationism, the eligibility response is an immediate consequence of Lewis’s general analysis of the theoretical virtue of simplicity. In the fi nal sections of the article, I examine the limitations of Lewis’s response. By focusing on an alternative argument for the inscrutability of reference, I am able to describe conditions under which the eligibility result will deliver the wrong results. In particular, if the world is complex enough and our language suffi ciently simple, then reference may be determinately secured to the wrong things

Modeling the emergence of universality in color naming patterns

The empirical evidence that human color categorization exhibits some universal patterns beyond superficial discrepancies across different cultures is a major breakthrough in cognitive science. As observed in the World Color Survey (WCS), indeed, any two groups of individuals develop quite different categorization patterns, but some universal properties can be identified by a statistical analysis over a large number of populations. Here, we reproduce the WCS in a numerical model in which different populations develop independently their own categorization systems by playing elementary language games. We find that a simple perceptual constraint shared by all humans, namely the human Just Noticeable Difference (JND), is sufficient to trigger the emergence of universal patterns that unconstrained cultural interaction fails to produce. We test the results of our experiment against real data by performing the same statistical analysis proposed to quantify the universal tendencies shown in the WCS [Kay P and Regier T. (2003) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 100: 9085-9089], and obtain an excellent quantitative agreement. This work confirms that synthetic modeling has nowadays reached the maturity to contribute significantly to the ongoing debate in cognitive science.Comment: Supplementery Information available here http://www.pnas.org/content/107/6/2403/suppl/DCSupplementa

Language typology in the UNITYP model : paper presented for the XIV. International Congress of Linguists, August 1987, Berlin, DDR, Plenary Session on Typology

The aim of this contribution is to embed the question of an antinomy between "integral" vs. "partial typology", inscribed as the topic of this plenary session, into the comprehensive framework of the dimensional model of the research group on language universals and typology (UNITYP). In this introductory section I shall evoke some cardinal points in the theory of linguistic typology, as viewed "from outside", viz. on the basis of striking parallelisms with psychological typology. Section 2 will permit a brief look on the dimensional model of UNITYP. In section 3 I shall present an illustration of a typological treatment on the basis of one particular dimension. In section 4 I shall draw some conclusions with special reference to the "integral vs. partial" antinomy