Order shaped by cognition. Evidence for (and against) the effect of domain-general biases on word and morpheme order
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21098552 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Jennifer Culbertson (0000-0002-1737-6296, University of Edinburgh, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 43 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 357-378 |
| Publication date | 2024-11-26 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0721-9067 • E-ISSN: 1613-3706 |
| Publisher | Walter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE) |
| DOI | 10.1515/zfs-2024-2014 |
| OpenAlex | W4403892069 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 44 |
A foundational goal of linguistics has been to understand why languages look the way they do. A range of possible explanations exist – from domain-specific representations to cognition-external factors like history and grammaticalization – and all of these undoubtedly play some role. But determining exactly how these link with specific features of language remains challenging, and the role of domain-specific mechanisms has been particularly contentious. In this paper, I highlight a growing new approach, which uses artificial language experiments to link individual-level biases to cross-linguistic trends in language structure. Using word and morpheme order as case studies, I will show how a range of different paradigms and learner populations allow us to make progress on this crucial issue in linguistics. I will focus on typological trends in word and morpheme order. For some ordering trends, experimental evidence points to variation across populations, suggesting that the best explanation for these patterns likely has its root in language history and grammaticalization. In other cases, the evidence points to the role of universal but domain-general cognitive biases, like transparency and simplicity. These domain-general biases interact with linguistic representations in important ways. Taken together these studies help adjudicate between alternative explanations for a number of specific ordering patterns and suggest a new sense of domain-specificity in the evolution of language
Cognition · Cognitive psychology · Economics · Linguistics · Morpheme · Natural language processing · Word order · Categorization, perception, and language · Computer Science · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition · Mathematics · Neuroscience · Philosophy · Psychology · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation
The Branching Direction Theory of Word Order Correlations Revisited
Noun Phrase in the Generative Perspective
Core Syntax
Demonstratives as individual concepts
Noun Phrase Interpretation and Type-Shifting Principles
Getting it right by getting it wrong
Over-reliance on English hinders cognitive science
Sentence Perception as an Interactive Parallel Process
Learning biases predict a word order universal
The weirdest people in the world?
Morphology
The Noun Phrase
Linguistic Diversity in Space and Time
Experimental evidence for the influence of structure and meaning on linear order in the noun phrase
A learning bias for word order harmony
Cross-linguistic evidence for cognitive universals in the noun phrase
Accounting for the position of verbal agreement morphology with psycholinguistic and diachronic explanatory factors
Heads
Linear Asymmetries and the LCA
Deriving Greenberg's Universal 20 and Its Exceptions
On the order of demonstrative, numeral, adjective, and noun
Asymmetries in the prosodic phrasing of function words
From the world to word order
A formal universal of natural language grammar
On Diachronic Sources and Synchronic Pattern
The Greenbergian Word Order Correlations
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |