Péter Rácz
Biographic Data
| ID | 3592333 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Péter Rácz |
| GIVEN NAMES | Péter |
| FAMILY NAME | Rácz |
| SIGNATURE | RÁCZ P |
| AFFILIATIONS | Central European University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7896-4801 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 12 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 3 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 12 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2013 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
The communicative role of adjectives: Evidence from Hungarian
Language is shaped by pressures of communicative efficiency. In a paper published in 2018, Dye and colleagues proposed that adjectives serve a communicative function by smoothing information density: formulaic adjectives make low-frequency nouns easier to predict, reducing processing difficulty. I test this communicative account against a sampling account, which claims that apparent smoothing emerges as a sampling artefact of Zipfian frequency di…
Possession trance covaries with measures of social rigidity in the Ethnographic Atlas
Possession trance is an altered state of consciousness resulting from spirit possession, belief in an alien entity residing in the self. Though treated as an individual psychopathological condition in Western medicine, cultural anthropology has long tied possession trance, and trance and possession phenomena in general, to marginalization by increasingly complex and inflexible social structures. This paper revisits these claims by analyzing cross…
Beyond Plain and Extra-Grammatical Morphology: Echo-Pairs in Hungarian
This paper presents an investigation of echo-pairs in Hungarian. Echo-pairs are formed by duplicating a base with an altered initial consonant and have diminutive, playful, or intimate connotations (e.g., cica [t͡sit͡sɒ] “cat” → cica-mica [t͡sit͡sɒ-mit͡sɒ] “cat.dim”). Echo-pairs are commonly seen as an example of extra-grammatical morphology in the literature. Our goal in looking at this phenomenon is to gain a better understanding of the morphol…
Children's Knowledge of a Name-Based Avoidance Register: A Quantitative Study among Datooga of Tanzania
Among Datooga pastoralists of Tanzania, an elaborate in-law naming taboo has led to the emergence of a conventionalized avoidance vocabulary used by married women. We report on a survey investigating Datooga children's knowledge of this special vocabulary. The questionnaire and our expectations were pre-registered and the results were analyzed using regression analysis. Though use of the avoidance vocabulary is gender-specific, girls were only sl…
Morphological convergence as on-line lexical analogy
The English past tense contains pockets of variation, where regular and irregular forms compete (e.g. learned / learnt, weaved / wove ). Individuals vary considerably in the degree to which they prefer irregular forms. This article examines the degree to which individuals may converge on their regularization patterns and preferences. We report on a novel experimental methodology, using a cooperative game involving nonce verbs. Analysis of partici…
Acquiring the lexicon and grammar of universal kinship: Supplementary material
Morphological convergence as on-line lexical analogy: Supplementary materials
In this supplementary information, we detail (1) the structure of our nonce verb stimuli, (2) the setup of the Generalized Context Model (GCM) and (3) the Minimal Generalization Learner (MGL), and (4) how these models compare.We illustrate the models using fits on our baseline data.We also discuss model selection in analysing our regression data (5), how the two learning models compare on our baseline data (6), and how they compare on our ESP pos…
Morphological convergence as on-line lexical analogy
The English past-tense contains pockets of variation, where regular and irregular forms compete (e.g. learned/learnt, or weaved/wove). Individuals vary considerably in the degree to which they prefer irregular forms. This paper examines the degree to which individuals may converge on their regularization patterns and preferences. We report on a novel experimental methodology, using a cooperative game involving nonce verbs. Analysis of participant…
Not All Indexical Cues Are Equal: Differential Sensitivity to Dimensions of Indexical Meaning in an Artificial Language
In this study, we investigated the learning of indexical features by English‐speaking adults using a novel experimental paradigm. In a conceptual replication of Rácz, Hay, and Pierrehumbert (2017), participants learned an allomorphy pattern cued by a given social context. The social contexts were represented by conversation partners who differed by age, ethnicity, and/or gender and were positioned in various ways. The results showed that, after t…
Acquiring the lexicon and grammar of universal kinship
This article investigates how children learn an infinitely expanding ‘universal’ system of classificatory kinship terms. We report on a series of experiments designed to elicit acquisitional data on (i) nominal kinterms and (ii) sibling-inflected polysynthetic morphology in the Australian language Murrinhpatha. Photographs of the participants' own relatives are used as stimuli to assess knowledge of kinterms, kin-based grammatical contrasts, and …
Participants Conform to Humans but Not to Humanoid Robots in an English Past Tense Formation Task
In this article, we discuss the results of an experiment designed to test the boundaries of linguistic imitation in a group setting. While most prior work has focused on convergence in either sound structure or syntax, we investigate whether speakers' choices in verb morphology are influenced by others. The experiment uses an Asch-type peer pressure methodology. Participants give responses to target stimuli in a verbal and a visual task in a grou…
The perception of high frequency sibilants in Hungarian male speech
The aim of this paper is to report on an experiment designed to evaluate the perception of high frequency sibilant articulations in Hungarian male speech and to theorise on the results. The main findings of the experiment are that the Hungarian listeners rate high frequency sibilants with femininity. These findings suggest that there is at least some social awareness of sibilant frequency in Hungarian. What follows from this is, in turn, that the…
Children's Knowledge of a Name-Based Avoidance Register: A Quantitative Study among Datooga of Tanzania
Among Datooga pastoralists of Tanzania, an elaborate in-law naming taboo has led to the emergence of a conventionalized avoidance vocabulary used by married women. We report on a survey investigating Datooga children's knowledge of this special vocabulary. The questionnaire and our expectations were pre-registered and the results were analyzed using regression analysis. Though use of the avoidance vocabulary is gender-specific, girls were only sl…
Acquiring the lexicon and grammar of universal kinship
This article investigates how children learn an infinitely expanding ‘universal’ system of classificatory kinship terms. We report on a series of experiments designed to elicit acquisitional data on (i) nominal kinterms and (ii) sibling-inflected polysynthetic morphology in the Australian language Murrinhpatha. Photographs of the participants' own relatives are used as stimuli to assess knowledge of kinterms, kin-based grammatical contrasts, and …
Participants Conform to Humans but Not to Humanoid Robots in an English Past Tense Formation Task
In this article, we discuss the results of an experiment designed to test the boundaries of linguistic imitation in a group setting. While most prior work has focused on convergence in either sound structure or syntax, we investigate whether speakers' choices in verb morphology are influenced by others. The experiment uses an Asch-type peer pressure methodology. Participants give responses to target stimuli in a verbal and a visual task in a grou…
The perception of high frequency sibilants in Hungarian male speech
The aim of this paper is to report on an experiment designed to evaluate the perception of high frequency sibilant articulations in Hungarian male speech and to theorise on the results. The main findings of the experiment are that the Hungarian listeners rate high frequency sibilants with femininity. These findings suggest that there is at least some social awareness of sibilant frequency in Hungarian. What follows from this is, in turn, that the…
Participants Conform to Humans but Not to Humanoid Robots in an English Past Tense Formation Task
In this article, we discuss the results of an experiment designed to test the boundaries of linguistic imitation in a group setting. While most prior work has focused on convergence in either sound structure or syntax, we investigate whether speakers' choices in verb morphology are influenced by others. The experiment uses an Asch-type peer pressure methodology. Participants give responses to target stimuli in a verbal and a visual task in a grou…
Morphological convergence as on-line lexical analogy
The English past tense contains pockets of variation, where regular and irregular forms compete (e.g. learned / learnt, weaved / wove ). Individuals vary considerably in the degree to which they prefer irregular forms. This article examines the degree to which individuals may converge on their regularization patterns and preferences. We report on a novel experimental methodology, using a cooperative game involving nonce verbs. Analysis of partici…
Acquiring the lexicon and grammar of universal kinship: Supplementary material
Morphological convergence as on-line lexical analogy: Supplementary materials
In this supplementary information, we detail (1) the structure of our nonce verb stimuli, (2) the setup of the Generalized Context Model (GCM) and (3) the Minimal Generalization Learner (MGL), and (4) how these models compare.We illustrate the models using fits on our baseline data.We also discuss model selection in analysing our regression data (5), how the two learning models compare on our baseline data (6), and how they compare on our ESP pos…
Morphological convergence as on-line lexical analogy
The English past-tense contains pockets of variation, where regular and irregular forms compete (e.g. learned/learnt, or weaved/wove). Individuals vary considerably in the degree to which they prefer irregular forms. This paper examines the degree to which individuals may converge on their regularization patterns and preferences. We report on a novel experimental methodology, using a cooperative game involving nonce verbs. Analysis of participant…
Not All Indexical Cues Are Equal: Differential Sensitivity to Dimensions of Indexical Meaning in an Artificial Language
In this study, we investigated the learning of indexical features by English‐speaking adults using a novel experimental paradigm. In a conceptual replication of Rácz, Hay, and Pierrehumbert (2017), participants learned an allomorphy pattern cued by a given social context. The social contexts were represented by conversation partners who differed by age, ethnicity, and/or gender and were positioned in various ways. The results showed that, after t…
Acquiring the lexicon and grammar of universal kinship
This article investigates how children learn an infinitely expanding ‘universal’ system of classificatory kinship terms. We report on a series of experiments designed to elicit acquisitional data on (i) nominal kinterms and (ii) sibling-inflected polysynthetic morphology in the Australian language Murrinhpatha. Photographs of the participants' own relatives are used as stimuli to assess knowledge of kinterms, kin-based grammatical contrasts, and …
Beyond Plain and Extra-Grammatical Morphology: Echo-Pairs in Hungarian
This paper presents an investigation of echo-pairs in Hungarian. Echo-pairs are formed by duplicating a base with an altered initial consonant and have diminutive, playful, or intimate connotations (e.g., cica [t͡sit͡sɒ] “cat” → cica-mica [t͡sit͡sɒ-mit͡sɒ] “cat.dim”). Echo-pairs are commonly seen as an example of extra-grammatical morphology in the literature. Our goal in looking at this phenomenon is to gain a better understanding of the morphol…
Children's Knowledge of a Name-Based Avoidance Register: A Quantitative Study among Datooga of Tanzania
Among Datooga pastoralists of Tanzania, an elaborate in-law naming taboo has led to the emergence of a conventionalized avoidance vocabulary used by married women. We report on a survey investigating Datooga children's knowledge of this special vocabulary. The questionnaire and our expectations were pre-registered and the results were analyzed using regression analysis. Though use of the avoidance vocabulary is gender-specific, girls were only sl…
Possession trance covaries with measures of social rigidity in the Ethnographic Atlas
Possession trance is an altered state of consciousness resulting from spirit possession, belief in an alien entity residing in the self. Though treated as an individual psychopathological condition in Western medicine, cultural anthropology has long tied possession trance, and trance and possession phenomena in general, to marginalization by increasingly complex and inflexible social structures. This paper revisits these claims by analyzing cross…
The communicative role of adjectives: Evidence from Hungarian
Language is shaped by pressures of communicative efficiency. In a paper published in 2018, Dye and colleagues proposed that adjectives serve a communicative function by smoothing information density: formulaic adjectives make low-frequency nouns easier to predict, reducing processing difficulty. I test this communicative account against a sampling account, which claims that apparent smoothing emerges as a sampling artefact of Zipfian frequency di…
Linguistics (10 works) · Psychology (9 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · Cognitive psychology (5 works) · Computer Science (5 works) · Language and cultural evolution (5 works) · Social Psychology (5 works) · Sociology (5 works) · Anthropology (4 works) · Mathematics (4 works)