Measuring Conventionalization in the Manual Modality

Gestures produced by users of spoken languages differ from signs produced by users of sign languages in that gestures are more typically ad hoc and idiosyncratic, while signs are more typically conventionalized and shared within a language community. To measure how gestures may change over time as a result of the process of conventionalization, we used a social coordination game to elicit repeated silent gestures from hearing non-signers, and used Microsoft Kinect to unobtrusively track the movement of their bodies as they gestured. Our approach follows from a tradition of laboratory experiments designed to study language evolution and draws upon insights from sign language research on language emergence. Working with silent gesture, we were able to simulate and quantify hallmarks of conventionalization that have been described for sign languages, in the laboratory. With Kinect, we measured a reduction in the size of the articulatory space and a decrease in the distance traveled by the articulators, while communicative success increased between participants over time. This approach opens the door for more direct future comparisons between ad hoc gestures produced in the lab and natural sign languages in the world.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/150191/1/Namboodiripad et al. - 2016.pd

An Experimental Approach to Variation and Variability in Constituent Order

What does it mean for a language to have flexible constituent order, and what are the sources of variation in this domain, both within and across languages? This thesis addresses these questions by combining methods from traditional linguistic fieldwork with those from psycholinguistics, focusing on Malayalam (Dravidian), in which all six permutations of subject, object, and verb are grammatical and have the same truth-conditional meaning. I propose a novel operational measure of flexibility in constituent order which uses formal acceptability judgment experiments: a greater preference for canonical versus non-canonical orders is associated with decreased flexibility. I demonstrate the cross-linguistic validity of this measure by comparing English and Malayalam (Experiments 1 and 2). After considering in more detail the relationship between information structure and constituent order in Malayalam (Experiment 3), I show that formal acceptability experiments can measure variation in flexibility within Malayalam, with older participants exhibiting greater flexibility than younger participants (Experiment 4). I consider language contact as a potential source of this variation, and conclude with a discussion of the role of flexibility in contact-induced syntactic change. The approach proposed in this thesis not only allows for an enriched typology of constituent order, it also has implications for our understanding of how languages interact and change

An Experimental Approach to Variation and Variability in Constituent Order

What does it mean for a language to have flexible constituent order, and what are the sources of variation in this domain, both within and across languages? This thesis addresses these questions by combining methods from traditional linguistic fieldwork with those from psycholinguistics, focusing on Malayalam (Dravidian), in which all six permutations of subject, object, and verb are grammatical and have the same truth-conditional meaning. I propose a novel operational measure of flexibility in constituent order which uses formal acceptability judgment experiments: a greater preference for canonical versus non-canonical orders is associated with decreased flexibility. I demonstrate the cross-linguistic validity of this measure by comparing English and Malayalam (Experiments 1 and 2). After considering in more detail the relationship between information structure and constituent order in Malayalam (Experiment 3), I show that formal acceptability experiments can measure variation in flexibility within Malayalam, with older participants exhibiting greater flexibility than younger participants (Experiment 4). I consider language contact as a potential source of this variation, and conclude with a discussion of the role of flexibility in contact-induced syntactic change. The approach proposed in this thesis not only allows for an enriched typology of constituent order, it also has implications for our understanding of how languages interact and change

A gradient approach to flexible constituent order

Languages are known to differ in how many orderings of major constituents are grammatical, as well as how interchangeable these orders are, a property often referred to as flexibility. Due to a variety of factors, including methodological barriers, flexibility is often underdescribed or treated as categorically, with languages being placed into heterogenous bins such as “free” or “rigid”. This paper advocates for starting from the premise that languages differ in degree and not kind when it comes to flexibility, presents a novel method for measuring flexibility in constituent order (via acceptability judgment experiments), and applies this approach to two languages which are known to differ in flexibility: English (Experiment 1) and Malayalam (Experiment 2). Flexibility is operationally defined as the difference in acceptability between canonical and non-canonical orders. Experiment 1 demonstrates that acceptability experiments can distinguish between canonical (svo), non-canonical (osv), and ungrammatical orders in English. For Malayalam, in which all orders of subject, object, and verb are grammatical and attested, verb-final orders group together and are most acceptable, followed by verb-medial and then verb-initial orders; this provides an initial picture of non-verb-final orders, which have been under-theorized in this language. Finally, a qualitative comparison of each language’s constituent order profile (a plot of the acceptability of each order in a language) serves as proof-of-concept that this measure allows for meaningful comparison across languages. This approach serves to en- rich typological descriptions of constituent order across languages, and it opens up opportunities for testing hypotheses about the source(s) of flexibility