Eliminating Unpredictable Linguistic Variation through Interaction

Kenny Smith, Olga Feher, Nikolaus Ritt

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapter

Abstract

Languages tend not to exhibit unpredictable variation. We ex- plore alignment/accommodation during interaction as a mech- anism to explain this cross-linguistic tendency. Specifically, we test the hypothesis (derived from historical linguistics) that interactions between categorical and variable users are inher- ently asymmetric: while variable users (of e.g. a grammatical marker) can accommodate to their partner by increasing their usage, categorical users should be reluctant to accommodate to variable partners, since this requires them to violate the rules of their grammar. We ran an experiment in which pairs of par- ticipants learnt a miniature language (featuring a potentially variable grammatical marker) and then used it to communi- cate. Our results support the hypothesis: variably-trained par- ticipants accommodate to their categorically-trained partners, who do not change their behaviour during interaction. More generally, interaction results in the elimination of variation: ac- commodation/alignment is a viable mechanism for explaining the absence of unpredictable variation in language.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 36th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society
Place of PublicationAustin, TX
PublisherCognitive Science Society
Pages1461-1466
ISBN (Print) 978-0-9911967-0-8
Publication statusPublished - 2014
EventCogSci 2014 - Quebec City, Canada
Duration: 23 Jul 201426 Jul 2014

Conference

ConferenceCogSci 2014
Country/TerritoryCanada
CityQuebec City
Period23/07/1426/07/14

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Eliminating Unpredictable Linguistic Variation through Interaction'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this