Language Evolution and Computation Bibliography

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T. F. Jaeger
2018
Psychological science 29(1):72-82, 2018
Human languages exhibit both striking diversity and abstract commonalities. Whether these commonalities are shaped by potentially universal principles of human information processing has been of central interest in the language and psychological sciences. Research has identified ...MORE ⇓
Human languages exhibit both striking diversity and abstract commonalities. Whether these commonalities are shaped by potentially universal principles of human information processing has been of central interest in the language and psychological sciences. Research has identified one such abstract property in the domain of word order: Although sentence word-order preferences vary across languages, the superficially different orders result in short grammatical dependencies between words. Because dependencies are easier to process when they are short rather than long, these findings raise the possibility that languages are shaped by biases of human information processing. In the current study, we directly tested the hypothesized causal link. We found that learners exposed to novel miniature artificial languages that had unnecessarily long dependencies did not follow the surface preference of their native language but rather systematically restructured the input to reduce dependency lengths. These results provide direct evidence for a causal link between processing preferences in individual speakers and patterns in linguistic diversity.
2012
PNAS 109(44):17897-17902, 2012
Languages of the world display many structural similarities. We test the hypothesis that some of these structural properties may arise from biases operating during language acquisition that shape languages over time. Specifically, we investigate whether language learners are ...MORE ⇓
Languages of the world display many structural similarities. We test the hypothesis that some of these structural properties may arise from biases operating during language acquisition that shape languages over time. Specifically, we investigate whether language learners are biased toward linguistic systems that strike an efficient balance between robust information transfer, on the one hand, and effort or resource demands, on the other hand, thereby increasing the communicative utility of the acquired language. In two experiments, we expose learners to miniature artificial languages designed in such a way that they do not use their formal devices (case marking) efficiently to facilitate robust information transfer. We find that learners restructure such languages in ways that facilitate efficient information transfer compared with the input language. These systematic changes introduced by the learners follow typologically frequent patterns, supporting the hypothesis that some of the structural similarities found in natural languages are shaped by biases toward communicatively efficient linguistic systems.
2011
Greenbergian universals, diachrony, and statistical analyses
Linguistic Typology 15(2):433--453, 2011
In their article “Evolved structure of language shows lineage-specific trends in word order universals”, Dunn, Greenhill, Levinson, & Gray present evidence purporting to demonstrate that both Chomskyan and Greenbergian language universals are invalid. In particular, ...
Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science 2(3):323--335, 2011
Abstract Functionalist typologists have long argued that pressures associated with language usage influence the distribution of grammatical properties across the world's languages. Specifically, grammatical properties may be observed more often across languages ...
Complementing quantitative typology with behavioral approaches: Evidence for typological universals
Linguistic Typology 15(2):497--508, 2011
Two main classes of theory have been advanced to explain correlations between linguistic features like those observed by Greenberg (1963). ARBITRARY CONSTRAINT theories argue that certain sets of features patterm together because they have a single underlying ...