Adults are more efficient in creating and transmitting novel signalling systems than children

Iterated language learning experiments have shown that meaningful and structured signalling systems emerge when there is pressure for signals to be both learnable and expressive. Yet such experiments have mainly been conducted with adults using language-like signals. Here we explore whether structured signalling systems can also emerge when signalling domains are unfamiliar and when the learners are children with their well-attested cognitive and pragmatic limitations. In Experiment 1, we compared iterated learning of binary auditory sequences denoting small sets of meanings in chains of adults and 5-7-year old children. Signalling systems became more learnable even though iconicity and structure did not emerge despite applying a homonymy filter designed to keep the systems expressive. When the same types of signals were used in referential communication by adult and child dyads in Experiment 2, only the adults, but not the children, were able to negotiate shared iconic and structured signals. Referential communication using their native language by 4-5-year old children in Experiment 3 showed that only interaction with adults, but not with peers resulted in informative expressions. These findings suggest that emergence and transmission of communication systems is unlikely to be driven by children, and point to the importance of cognitive maturity and pragmatic expertise of learners as well as feedback-based scaffolding of communicative effectiveness by experts during language evolution

Constraints on Language Learning : behavioral and neurocognitive studies with adults and children

This thesis will contribute to a body of experimental work addressing the question of whether language learning plays a role in certain fundamental design properties of natural languages. Methodologically, this thesis seeks to extend the artificial language learning paradigm, investigating whether learners are sensitive to the constraints embodied by key properties of languages. For example, we will explore whether communicative pressure influences the final outcome of language learning, namely how the structures that are acquired by individuals are transmitted to downstream generations. We will also explore how basic language learning constraints operate in different age groups and, importantly, cross-linguistically. Next to the behavioral experiments focusing on learning and its outcomes, we will look at preliminary electrophysiological correlates of basic compositional processing in the early stages of learning a miniature artificial language using electroencephalography (EEG). In this general introduction I will briefly discuss some of the relevant concepts and methods which will be used in three studies that constitute this thesis

How research on language evolution contributes to linguistics

Since its inception in the second part of the 20th century, the science of language evolution has been exerting a growing and formative pressure on linguistics. More obviously, given its interdisciplinary character, the science of language evolution provides a platform on which linguists can meet and discuss a variety of problems pertaining to the nature of language and ways of investigating it with representatives of other disciplines and research traditions. It was largely in this way that the attention of linguists was attracted to the study of emerging sign languages and gestures, as well as to the resultant reflection on the way different modalities impact communicative systems that use them. But linguistics also benefits from the findings made by language evolution researchers in the context of their own research questions and methodologies. The most important of these findings come out of the experimental research on bootstrapping communication systems and the evolution of communicative structure, and from mass comparison studies that correlate linguists data with a wide range of environmental variables

Indonesian EFL teachers’ intercultural profiles in Indonesian universities

Being a foreign language and an intercultural educator in an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) context is full of complexities. With diverse sociocultural aspects in a context, it would be naïve to implement a set of global profile of culture to all contexts. Therefore, the present study is held to start to investigate complexities on teacher individual level in the implementation of intercultural approach to EFL in Indonesian context. The study strives to interlink between the teacher belief and the characteristics of an intercultural teacher to indicate a teacher personal positioning toward the intercultural pedagogy. Through the method of narrative inquiry and narrative analysis, the teachers’ narratives were collected by interviews and scrutinised. The study revealed that ambivalence and contradiction appeared in the teachers’ beliefs about intercultural pedagogy. It has premises that a teacher’s positioning is affected by learning and teaching experiences, professional development, and personal experiences. Teaching context plays a central role in shaping the practices. The results show capacity building must be advocated and the identical studies must be replicated focusing on how a teacher develops intercultural communicative competence in order to bring quality of intercultural EFL pedagogy in Indonesia

The emergence and organization of communicative signals through interaction

Social interaction is a key feature of our daily lives; humans simply cannot help but interact with one another. This interaction is special with regard to its quantity, but it also shows distinct qualities such as a special propensity to read each other’s intentions. One specific kind of interaction that humans engage in frequently and that exemplifies this particularly well is communication. By producing and interpreting signals in their specific context, interlocutors are able to communicate successfully, even about concepts for which they do not yet share conventional signs. Over repeated interaction, these novel signals can conventionalize, and eventually be culturally transmitted to new individuals. Through repeated episodes of transmission, entire communicative systems, such as languages, can emerge and evolve. In this thesis, I build on the framework above to study how human communicative signals can emerge and become organized via interaction. To this end, I present the results of three empirical studies each concerned with one specific question. The first study represents two artificial language experiments investigating the role of context for the successful emergence of novel communicative conventions, the second study focuses on the evolution of population-level cultural patterns, and the third study aims to relate existing communicative conventions about color terms in natural languages to novel conventions created within a smartphone application. The three studies show the usefulness of combining different methodological approaches – experimental laboratory studies, large-scale online experiments, and massive data sets of online behavior – to address questions at different levels of granularity. Taken together, the studies place individual interactions firmly at the base of both the emergence and organization of communicative signals. As a result of these interactions, entire systems of communication can emerge