Color technology is not necessary for rich and efficient color language

The evolution of basic color terms in language is claimed to be stimulated by technological development, involving technological control of color or exposure to artificially colored objects. Accordingly, technologically “simple” non-industrialized societies are expected to have poor lexicalization of color, i.e., only rudimentary lexica of 2, 3 or 4 basic color terms, with unnamed gaps in the color space. While it may indeed be the case that technology stimulates lexical growth of color terms, it is sometimes considered a sine qua non for color salience and lexicalization. We provide novel evidence that this overlooks the role of the natural environment, and people's engagement with the environment, in the evolution of color vocabulary. We introduce the Maniq—nomadic hunter-gatherers with no color technology, but who have a basic color lexicon of 6 or 7 terms, thus of the same order as large languages like Vietnamese and Hausa, and who routinely talk about color. We examine color language in Maniq and compare it to available data in other languages to demonstrate it has remarkably high consensual color term usage, on a par with English, and high coding efficiency. This shows colors can matter even for non-industrialized societies, suggesting technology is not necessary for color language. Instead, factors such as perceptual prominence of color in natural environments, its practical usefulness across communicative contexts, and symbolic importance can all stimulate elaboration of color language

Production of referring expressions : preference trumps discrimination

When referring to an object using a description, speak- ers need to select properties which jointly distinguish it from any potential distractors. Previous empirical and computational work addressing this content selec- tion process has highlighted the role of both (i) the dis- criminatory power of properties of a referent, i.e. how many of the distractors in a domain each property ex- cludes; (ii) how inherently salient or preferred a property is. To date, there has been no attempt to systematically investigate the trade-o between these two potentially competing motivations. This paper investigates experi- mentally the extent to which speakers take discrimina- tory power versus preference into account during con- tent selection for reference production. Our results sug- gest that discriminatory power in fact plays a relatively unimportant role. We discuss the implications of this for computational models of reference production.peer-reviewe

The Role of Graduality for Referring Expression Generation in Visual Scenes

International audienceReferring Expression Generation (reg) algorithms, a core component of systems that generate text from non-linguistic data, seek to identify domain objects using natural language descriptions. While reg has often been applied to visual domains, very few approaches deal with the problem of fuzziness and gradation. This paper discusses these problems and how they can be accommodated to achieve a more realistic view of the task of referring to objects in visual scenes

The role of graduality for referring expression generation in visual scenes

Referring Expression Generation (reg) algorithms, a core component of systems that generate text from non-linguistic data, seek to identify domain objects using natural language descriptions. While reg has often been applied to visual domains, very few approaches deal with the problem of fuzziness and gradation. This paper discusses these problems and how they can be accommodated to achieve a more realistic view of the task of referring to objects in visual scenes.peer-reviewe

Language and culture in perception: a three-pronged investigation of phylogenetic, ontogenetic and cross-cultural evidence

Brown and Lenneberg (I954) and Rosch Heider (1972) were among the first to conduct psychological investigations to test the Whorfian view that language affects thought. They both asked about colour categories. The debate has continued with some research supporting a relativist (Whorfian) account (Davidoff, Davies & Roberson, I999; Borodistsky, 200I), and some supporting a universalist account (e.g., Kay & Regier, 2003; Spelke & Kinzler, 2007). The present thesis adds to the debate by taking three different approaches i.e., cross-cultural, ontogenetic and phylogenetic frames in which to carry out investigations of categorization of various perceptual continua. Categorical Perception's hallmark is the effect of mental warping of space such as has been found for phonemes (Pisani & Tash, I974) and colour (Bornstein & Monroe, I980; Bornstein & Korda, I984). With respect to colours, those that cross a category boundary seem more distant than two otherwise equally spaced colours from the same category. Warping is tested using cognitive methods such as two-alternative-forced-choice and matching-to-sample. Evidence is considered for the continua under investigation i.e. colour and animal patterns. Experiments 1 and 2 find evidence of categorical perception for human-primates and not for monkeys. Experiment 3 finds that Himba and English human adults categorize differently, particularly for colours crossing a category boundary, but also show broad similarity in solving the same matching-to-sample task as used with the monkeys (experiment I) who showed clear differences with humans. Experiment 4 and 5 tested Himba and English toddlers and found categorical perception of colour mainly for toddlers that knew their colour terms despite prior findings (Franklin et al., 2005) indicative of universal colour categories. In experiment 6, Himba and English categorical perception of animal patterns was tested for the first time, and result indicate a cross-category advantage for participants who knew the animal pattern terms. Therefore, a weak Whorfian view of linguistic relativity's role in obtaining categorical perception effects is presented. Although there is some evidence of an inherent human way of grouping drawn from results of experiment 1 and 3, results in all experiments (1,2,3,4,5, and 6) show that linguistic labels and categorical perception effects go hand-in-hand; categorization effects are not found when linguistic terms are not acquired at test and have not had a chance to affect cognition. This was true for all populations under observation in this set of studies, providing further support for effects of language and culture in perception

Planning scope in spoken and written sentence production

This thesis investigates two questions about the cognitive mechanisms underlying the advance preparation of sentences. First, how much planning does the language system require to begin outputting a sentence and second, how is this scope determined. Previous research has concluded that advance planning embraces less than the sentence, is determined by either content or structure of some minimal linguistic unit, and is subject to variation (V. S. Ferreira & Slevc, 2007). Unlike previous research, the presented hypotheses were evaluated in both speech and writing. This eliminates explanations in terms of mechanisms that are modality specific, and therefore not fundamental to the language production system (see Alario, Costa, Ferreira, & Pickering, 2006). In two series of three experiments I elicited short sentences in speech and writing (keyboard typing). Under controlled conditions I manipulated (a) structural and lexical properties of elicited sentences (first series, Chapter 2) and (b) conceptual properties of the sentence's message (second series, Chapter 3). Hypotheses were evaluated by measurement of the time required to initiate output of the target sentence and of eye movements to referents of this sentence (arrays of simple line drawings) shown on the computer screen. These suggested two main conclusions: (1) Consistent with some previous research advance planning scopes over coordinated noun phrases (A and the B) while lexical content requires planning for the first noun but not beyond (Chapter 2), demonstrating for the first time that this effect replicates in writing. (2) Whether or not noun phrases are preplanned beyond the first noun is determined at a conceptual level, and not at a syntactic level (Chapter 3). These findings are in line with current models of language production (Bock & Ferreira, 2014; Konopka & Brown-Schmidt, 2014) and constitute a first step towards confirming the modality independence of these models

Viewing time affects overspecification : evidence for two strategies of attribute selection during reference production

overspecified: they tend to include more attributes than necessary to distinguish the target referent. The current paper investigates how the occurrence of overspecification is affected by viewing time. We conducted an experiment in which speakers were asked to refer to target objects in visual domains. Half of the speakers had unlimited time to inspect the domains, while viewing time was limited (1000 ms) for the other half. The results reveal that limited viewing time induces the occurrence of overspecification. We conjecture that limited viewing time caused speakers to rely heavily on quick heuristics during attribute selection, which urge them to select attributes that are perceptually salient. In the case of unlimited inspection time, speakers seem to rely on a combination of heuristic and more deliberate selection strategies.peer-reviewe

Viewing time affects overspecification:Evidence for two strategies of attribute selection during reference production

Speakers often produce definite referring expressions that are overspecified: they tend to include more attributes than necessary to distinguish the target referent. The current paper investigates how the occurrence of overspecification is affected by viewing time. We conducted an experiment in which speakers were asked to refer to target objects in visual domains. Half of the speakers had unlimited time to inspect the domains, while viewing time was limited (1000 ms) for the other half. The results reveal that limited viewing time induces the occurrence of overspecification. We conjecture that limited viewing time caused speakers to rely heavily on quick heuristics during attribute selection, which urge them to select attributes that are perceptually salient. In the case of unlimited inspection time, speakers seem to rely on a combination of heuristic and more deliberate selection strategies