Journal :: Language
2012
S-curves and the mechanisms of propagation in language change
Language 88(2):269--304, 2012
Abstract A variety of mechanisms have been proposed in sociolinguistics for the propagation of an innovation through the speech community. The complexity of social systems makes it difficult to evaluate the different mechanisms empirically. We use the four-way typology of ...
2011
What is the human language faculty?: Two viewsPDF
Language 87(3):586--624, 2011
Abstract In addition to providing an account of the empirical facts of language, a theory that aspires to account for language as a biologically based human faculty should seek a graceful integration of linguistic phenomena with what is known about other human ...
Grammars leak: Modeling how phonotactic generalizations interact within the grammarPDF
Language 87(4):751--770, 2011
Abstract I present evidence from Navajo and English that weaker, gradient versions of morpheme-internal phonotactic constraints, such as the ban on geminate consonants in English, hold even across prosodic word boundaries. I argue that these lexical biases are ...
2008
Structural phylogeny in historical linguistics: methodological explorations applied in Island MelanesiaPDF
Language 84(4):710--759, 2008
Abstract Using various methods derived from evolutionary biology, including maximum parsimony and Bayesian phylogenetic analysis, we tackle the question of the relationships among a group of Papuan isolate languages that have hitherto resisted accepted attempts ...
The logical structure of linguistic theory
Language 84(4):795--814, 2008
Abstract The object of inquiry in linguistics is the human ability to acquire and use a natural language, and the goal of linguistic theory is an explicit characterization of that ability. Looking at the communicative abilities of other species, it becomes clear that our ...MORE ⇓
Abstract The object of inquiry in linguistics is the human ability to acquire and use a natural language, and the goal of linguistic theory is an explicit characterization of that ability. Looking at the communicative abilities of other species, it becomes clear that our linguistic ...
2007
Evolutionary game theory and typology: A case study
Language 83(1):74-109, 2007
This article deals with the typology of the case marking of semantic core roles. The competing economy considerations of hearer (disambiguation) and speaker (minimal effort) are formalized in terms of EVOLUTIONARY GAME THEORY. It is shown that the case-marking patterns that are ...MORE ⇓
This article deals with the typology of the case marking of semantic core roles. The competing economy considerations of hearer (disambiguation) and speaker (minimal effort) are formalized in terms of EVOLUTIONARY GAME THEORY. It is shown that the case-marking patterns that are attested in the languages of the world are those that are evolutionarily stable for different relative weightings of speaker economy and hearer economy, given the statistical patterns of language use that were extracted from corpora of naturally occurring conversations.
2000
Grammatical Acquisition: Inductive Bias and Coevolution of Language and the Language Acquisition DevicePDF
Language 76(2):245-296, 2000
An account of grammatical acquisition is developed within the parameter setting framework applied to a generalized categorial grammar (GCG). The GCG is embedded in a default inheritance network yielding a natural partial ordering (reflecting generality) of parameters ...