Magyarországi vörösagyagok összehasonlító vizsgálata = Comparative study of red clays in Hungary

A magyarországi vörös talajok csoportosítása humuszminőségi, mikromorfológiai és tápanyag-gazdálkodási vizsgálat alapján történt. A humuszminőséget jellemző görbék és stabilitási koefficiens alapján az alábbi csoportokba rendeztük: - nagy stabilitási koefficiensű humuszminőségű talajok, - közepes stabilitási koefficiensű talajok, - kis stabilitási koefficiensű, gyengébb humusz-minőségű talajok. A fosszilis vörösagyagok humusza viszonylag rosszabb minőségű, hasonlít a trópusi talajokéhoz. A művelt reliktum vörös talajok humusz-minősége kedvezőbb. A hazai vörös talajok harmadkori eredetűek, de tulajdonságaik alakításában a jelenkori talajképző tényezők is részt vettek. Talajtani, ásványtani és mikromorfológiai vizsgálatok, valamint a mállottság foka alapján nyolc csoportba soroltuk a magyarországi vörösagyagokat. Néhány esetben (Gödöllő, Hatvan, Mád, Muzsla, Mátrakeresztes stb.) agyagbevonatok láthatók, melyek a kilúgzódás mikromorfológiai jelei. Az agyagbemosódás legnagyobb mértékű a Hatvan és Kővágószőlős mintákban. A duzzadás-zsugorodás a vázrészek körül foltokban, zónákban az alapanyag orientálódását idézi elő (Gödöllő, Gyöngyöstarján, Hatvan, Jósvafő, Kakasd, Kővágószőlős, Mád stb.). A gyöngyöstarjáni, ostorosi és csopaki talaj és szőlőminták vizsgálata alapján a szőlő tápanyag felvétele a vörösagyagokon zavartalan. | Hungarian relic and fossil red-clays are classified into 8 groups based on pedological, mineralogical and micromorphological analysis. Results of humus quality groups formed by stability coefficients and humus quality curves are the follows: - humus materials with high stability, - mean humus quality materials, - soils with low humus quality The fossil red-clays have worse humus quality, similar with the tropical red-soils. Cultivated relict red-soils have improved humus quality. Hungarian red-clays are derived from the Tertiary Period under tropical or subtropical climate, but theirs features were formed ecological conditions of present epoch too. In micromorphological analysis occurences of clay coating interpreted features of illuviation and weathered extent. The speckled and granostratied b-fabric of the groundmass whose occurence is mainly due to the swelling and shrinking, were observed in samples from Gödöllő, Gyöngyöstarján, Hatvan, Jósvafő, Kakasd, Kővágószőlős, Mád. Occurences of clay coating in samples of sites in Gödöllő, Hatvan, Mád, Muzsla, Mátrakeresztes were interpreted as a micromorphological features of illuviation. The most illuviation coatings and infillings were observed in samples from Hatvan and Kővágószőlős. According to analysis of soil and vine samples from Gyöngyöstarján, Ostoros and Csopak, it is declarable that nutrient absorption is undisturbed

Asymmetric accommodation during interaction leads to the regularisation of linguistic variants

Linguistic variation is constrained by grammatical and social context, making the occurrence of particular variants at least somewhat predictable. We explore accommodation during interaction as a potential mechanism to explain this phenomenon. Specifically, we test a hypothesis derived from historical linguistics that interaction between categorical and variable users is inherently asymmetric: while variable users accommodate to their partners, categorical users are reluctant to do so, because it would mean violating the rules of their grammar. We ran two experiments in which participants learnt a miniature language featuring a variable or categorical grammatical marker and then used it to communicate. Our results support the asymmetric accommodation hypothesis: variably-trained participants accommodated to their categorically-trained partners, who tended not to change their behaviour during interaction. These results may reflect general social cognitive constraints on acquiring and using variable linguistic devices, and give insights into how small-scale interactive mechanisms may influence population-level linguistic phenomena

Statistical learning in songbirds:From self-tutoring to song culture

At the onset of vocal development, both songbirds and humans produce variable vocal babbling with broadly distributed acoustic features. Over development, these vocalizations differentiate into the well-defined, categorical signals that characterize adult vocal behaviour. A broadly distributed signal is ideal for vocal exploration, that is, for matching vocal production to the statistics of the sensory input. The developmental transition to categorical signals is a gradual process during which the vocal output becomes differentiated and stable. But does it require categorical input? We trained juvenile zebra finches with playbacks of their own developing song, produced just a few moments earlier, updated continuously over development. Although the vocalizations of these self-tutored (ST) birds were initially broadly distributed, birds quickly developed categorical signals, as fast as birds that were trained with a categorical, adult song template. By contrast, siblings of those birds that received no training (isolates) developed phonological categories much more slowly and never reached the same level of category differentiation as their ST brothers. Therefore, instead of simply mirroring the statistical properties of their sensory input, songbirds actively transform it into distinct categories. We suggest that the early self-generation of phonological categories facilitates the establishment of vocal culture by making the song easier to transmit at the micro level, while promoting stability of shared vocabulary at the group level over generations

Language learning, language use and the evolution of linguistic variation

Linguistic universals arise from the interaction between the processes of language learning and language use. A test case for the relationship between these factors is linguistic variation, which tends to be conditioned on linguistic or sociolinguistic criteria. How can we explain the scarcity of unpredictable variation in natural language, and to what extent is this property of language a straightforward reflection of biases in statistical learning? We review three strands of experimental work exploring these questions, and introduce a Bayesian model of the learning and transmission of linguistic variation along with a closely matched artificial language learning experiment with adult participants. Our results show that while the biases of language learners can potentially play a role in shaping linguistic systems, the relationship between biases of learners and the structure of languages is not straightforward. Weak biases can have strong effects on language structure as they accumulate over repeated transmission. But the opposite can also be true: strong biases can have weak or no effects. Furthermore, the use of language during interaction can reshape linguistic systems. Combining data and insights from studies of learning, transmission and use is therefore essential if we are to understand how biases in statistical learning interact with language transmission and language use to shape the structural properties of language

Atypical birdsong and artificial languages provide insights into how communication systems are shaped by learning, use and transmission

In this article, I argue that a comparative approach focusing on the cognitive capacities and behavioral mechanisms that underlie vocal learning in songbirds and humans can provide valuable insights into the evolutionary origins of language. The experimental approaches I discuss use abnormal song and atypical linguistic input to study the processes of individual learning, social interaction, and cultural transmission. Atypical input places increased learning and communicative pressure on learners, so exploring how they respond to this type of input provides a particularly clear picture of the biases and constraints at work during learning and use. Furthermore, simulating the cultural transmission of these unnatural communication systems in the laboratory informs us about how learning and social biases influence the structure of communication systems in the long run. Findings based on these methods suggest fundamental similarities in the basic social–cognitive mechanisms underlying vocal learning in birds and humans, and continuing research promises insights into the uniquely human mechanisms and into how human cognition and social behavior interact, and ultimately impact on the evolution of language

Structural priming in artificial languages and the regularisation of unpredictable variation

We present a novel experimental technique using artificial language learning to investigate the relationship between structural priming during communicative interaction, and linguistic regularity. We use unpredictable variation as a test-case, because it is a well-established paradigm to study learners’ biases during acquisition, transmission and interaction. We trained participants on artificial languages exhibiting unpredictable variation in word order, and subsequently had them communicate using these artificial languages. We found evidence for structural priming in two different grammatical constructions and across human-human and human-computer interaction. Priming occurred regardless of behavioral convergence: communication led to shared word order use only in human-human interaction, but priming was observed in all conditions. Furthermore, interaction resulted in the reduction of unpredictable variation in all conditions, suggesting a role for communicative interaction in eliminating unpredictable variation. Regularisation was strongest in human-human interaction and in a condition where participants believed they were interacting with a human but were in fact interacting with a computer. We suggest that participants recognize the counter-functional nature of unpredictable variation and thus act to eliminate this variability during communication. Furthermore, reciprocal priming occurring in human-human interaction drove some pairs of participants to converge on maximally regular, highly predictable linguistic systems. Our method offers potential benefits to both the artificial language learning and the structural priming fields, and provides a useful tool to investigate communicative processes that lead to language change and ultimately language design