A Bayesian phylogenetic approach to estimating the stability of linguistic features and the genetic biasing of tone

Language is a hallmark of our species and understanding linguistic diversity is an area of major interest. Genetic factors influencing the cultural transmission of language provide a powerful and elegant explanation for aspects of the present day linguistic diversity and a window into the emergence and evolution of language. In particular, it has recently been proposed that linguistic tone—the usage of voice pitch to convey lexical and grammatical meaning—is biased by two genes involved in brain growth and development, ASPM and Microcephalin. This hypothesis predicts that tone is a stable characteristic of language because of its ‘genetic anchoring’. The present paper tests this prediction using a Bayesian phylogenetic framework applied to a large set of linguistic features and language families, using multiple software implementations, data codings, stability estimations, linguistic classifications and outgroup choices. The results of these different methods and datasets show a large agreement, suggesting that this approach produces reliable estimates of the stability of linguistic data. Moreover, linguistic tone is found to be stable across methods and datasets, providing suggestive support for the hypothesis of genetic influences on its distribution

Cultural Phylogenetics of the Tupi Language Family in Lowland South America

Background: Recent advances in automated assessment of basic vocabulary lists allow the construction of linguistic phylogenies useful for tracing dynamics of human population expansions, reconstructing ancestral cultures, and modeling transition rates of cultural traits over time. Methods: Here we investigate the Tupi expansion, a widely-dispersed language family in lowland South America, with a distance-based phylogeny based on 40-word vocabulary lists from 48 languages. We coded 11 cultural traits across the diverse Tupi family including traditional warfare patterns, post-marital residence, corporate structure, community size, paternity beliefs, sibling terminology, presence of canoes, tattooing, shamanism, men’s houses, and lip plugs. Results/Discussion: The linguistic phylogeny supports a Tupi homeland in west-central Brazil with subsequent major expansions across much of lowland South America. Consistently, ancestral reconstructions of cultural traits over the linguistic phylogeny suggest that social complexity has tended to decline through time, most notably in the independent emergence of several nomadic hunter-gatherer societies. Estimated rates of cultural change across the Tupi expansion are on the order of only a few changes per 10,000 years, in accord with previous cultural phylogenetic results in other languag

A general method for the statistical evaluation of typological distributions

The distribution of linguistic structures in the world is the joint product of universal principles, inheritance from ancestor languages, language contact, social structures, and random fluctuation. This paper proposes a method for evaluating the relative significance of each factor — and in particular, of universal principles — via regression modeling: statistical evidence for universal principles is found if the odds for families to have skewed responses (e.g. all or most members have postnominal relative clauses) as opposed to having an opposite response skewing or no skewing at all, is significantly higher for some condition (e.g. VO order) than for another condition, independently of other factors

Relating at work : facets, dialectics and face

This article examines ‘relating at work’. Recent theorising in pragmatics has drawn attention to the importance of analysing relations, and yet the pragmatic study of relations is now intertwined so closely with the concept of face (e.g. Arundale, 2010a; Holmes et al., 2011; Locher and Watts 2005, 2008) that it might seem the two are synonymous. In this paper, I review this research from a multidisciplinary perspective, and then report a study on ‘relating at work’ in which leaders and interns were interviewed about their experiences of starting work in a culturally unfamiliar setting. I focus on one dialectic, connectedness–separateness, and report the challenges they described in ‘making contact’. In the discussion section and on the basis of my findings, I argue the following points: (a) relating at work entails a complex web of interrelated facets and ‘smooth relations’ is just one of employees’ relational concerns; (b) Relational Dialectic Theory offers much potential for interpersonal pragmatics; (c) dialectic tensions can occur at the individual as well as the interpersonal/relational levels and an interactional achievement analytic perspective needs to be complemented by an individual perspective; (d) Relational Dialect Theory and Face Theory are complementary to each other and should not be conflated

shinyReCoR. A shiny application for automatically coding text responses using R

In this paper, we introduce shinyReCoR: a new app that utilizes a cluster-based method for automatically coding open-ended text responses. Reliable coding of text responses from educational or psychological assessments requires substantial organizational and human effort. The coding of natural language in responses to tests depends on the texts\u27 complexity, corresponding coding guides, and the guides\u27 quality. Manual coding is thus not only expensive but also error-prone. With shinyReCoR, we provide a more efficient alternative. The use of natural language processing makes texts utilizable for statistical methods. shinyReCoR is a Shiny app deployed as an R-package that allows users with varying technical affinity to create automatic response classifiers through a graphical user interface based on annotated data. The present paper describes the underlying methodology, including machine learning, as well as peculiarities of the processing of language in the assessment context. The app guides users through the workflow with steps like text corpus compilation, semantic space building, preprocessing of the text data, and clustering. Users can adjust each step according to their needs. Finally, users are provided with an automatic response classifier, which can be evaluated and tested within the process. (DIPF/Orig.

Phonological features of Hong Kong English : patterns of variation and effects on local acceptability

The changing dynamics of international communication in English have led to a intense questioning of the relevance of native-speaker pronunciation models in language teaching and testing. In addition, the World Englishes approach to local varieties has increased their level of recognition. Both of these developments suggest that English pronunciation models need to be reviewed, and Hong Kong represents an interesting case study. Although it has been claimed that Hong Kong English is at the ‘nativization’ stage, the existence of exonormative attitudes towards English is also well known. Two important questions arise from this inherent tension, neither of which has been intensively addressed in previous studies. Firstly, although many of the features of Hong Kong English pronunciation have been described, patterns of inter-speaker variation have not been investigated in detail. Secondly, the attitudes of Hong Kong English users towards the phonological features of their own variety have not been studied in ways that take account of such variation. This dissertation addresses both of these questions by being features-based in approach and using local listeners to evaluate accent samples. After an initial review of the features of Hong Kong English pronunciation, a preliminary study surveys the occurrence of consonantal phonological features within a mini-corpus of speech samples taken from local television programmes. Its findings are presented in the form of an implicational scale, which not only shows the relative frequencies with which different features occurred, but also indicates the existence of implicational patterns of co-occurrence. In the main study, twelve authentic accent samples (eleven Hong Kong speakers and one British speaker) were presented to 52 first-year undergraduate students for evaluation as to their acceptability, defined here as acceptability for pedagogical purposes. Multivariate statistical analysis discovered firstly that phonological ‘errors’, as marked by the student listeners, were the most important measured factor in determining the acceptability scores, and secondly that only certain types of ‘error’ or ‘feature’ had significant effects. These features were either related to L1 transfer or involved other salient phenomena such as idiosyncratic alterations to syllable structure. The explanatory part of the study includes acceptability as one of the factors determining feature persistence, in an ‘ecological’ or ‘evolutionary’ model of L2 phonology acquisition and development that combines the findings of the preliminary and main studies. Among the other factors that determine feature persistence or disappearance, salience, intelligibility and markedness are invoked as important influences. The acceptability data also has pedagogical implications, in that local listeners did not give the British accent the highest acceptability rating. This contrasts with the findings of previous studies regarding the pedagogical acceptability of the Hong Kong English accent. However, the features-based approach indicates that only certain types of local accent were acceptable to these listeners, and that these accents were more, rather than less, ‘native-like’. In various ways, the study contributes to an understanding of accent variation and acceptability within a new variety of English

Political Parties and Foreign Policy: A Structuralist Approach

This article introduces the theory and approach of structural anthropology and applies it to a problem in American political science. Through this approach, the "bipartisan foreign policy hypothesis" and the "two presidencies hypothesis" are reformulated and reconsidered. Until now participants in the debate over each have only rarely built on, or even cited, the other's research. An additional problem is that the widespread conventional wisdom in support of the two hypotheses is inconsistent with systematic scholarly analyses. This paper demonstrates that the two hypotheses are drawn from the same underlying structure. Each hypothesis and the theoretical model it implies is conceptually and empirically extended to take into account the differences between congressional leaders and members. Then, historical examples and statistical analyses of House roll call data are used to demonstrate that the hypotheses, while sometimes supported for the congressional members, are far more applicable to leadership decision making. Conclusions suggest that conventional wisdom be revised to take these differences into account.Governmen