Projects per year
Abstract / Description of output
Syntactic harmony occurs when heads and dependents align within and across different types of phrases in a language. Harmony is a well-known (statistical) typological universal: in most languages, many if not all heads and dependents are consistently ordered (i.e., either head-dependent, or dependent-head). Despite decades of work, from every conceivable theoretical perspective, the origins of syntactic harmony remain opaque. However, recent work using artificial language learning has suggested that harmonic patterns are easier to learn than their non-harmonic counter-parts. Thus at least part of the explanation for this tendency may be linked to learning. Here, we explore whether the mechanism behind the learning bias for syntactic harmony is fundamentally domain-general by instantiating harmony in non-linguistic stimuli. Our findings support the claim that the origins of syntactic harmony lie in a domain-general bias for simplicity acting on linearized, language-specific categories.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | Proceedings of the 44th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society |
Editors | Jennifer Culbertson, Andrew Perfors, Hugh Rabagliati, Veronica Ramenzoni |
Publisher | eScholarship University of California |
Pages | 1519-1525 |
Publication status | E-pub ahead of print - 17 Jun 2022 |
Event | 44th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society - Toronto, Canada Duration: 27 Jul 2022 → 30 Jul 2022 Conference number: 44 https://cognitivesciencesociety.org/cogsci-2022/ |
Publication series
Name | Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society |
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Publisher | Cognitive Science Society |
Volume | 44 |
ISSN (Electronic) | 1069-7977 |
Conference
Conference | 44th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society |
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Abbreviated title | CogSci 2022 |
Country/Territory | Canada |
City | Toronto |
Period | 27/07/22 → 30/07/22 |
Internet address |
Keywords / Materials (for Non-textual outputs)
- language universals
- syntax
- cognition
- learning biases
- artificial grammar learning
Fingerprint
Dive into the research topics of 'Syntactic harmony arises from a domain-general learning bias'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.Projects
- 2 Finished
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From Natural to Conventional word order; Iconicity, simplicity and the mechanisms of linguistic evolution
1/07/19 → 31/12/22
Project: Research
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Syntax shaped by cognition: transforming theories of syntactic systems through laboratory experiments
1/02/18 → 31/01/24
Project: Research
Research output
- 1 Book
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Proceedings of the 44th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society
Culbertson, J. (ed.), Perfors, A. (ed.), Rabagliati, H. (ed.) & Ramenzoni, V. (ed.), Jul 2022, (E-pub ahead of print) eScholarship University of California. (Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society; vol. 44)Research output: Book/Report › Book
Open Access