Article published in:
Interaction and Iconicity in the Evolution of LanguageEdited by Stefan Hartmann, Michael Pleyer, James Winters and Jordan Zlatev
[Interaction Studies 18:3] 2017
► pp. 352–375
Conventionalisation and discrimination as competing pressures on continuous speech-like signals
Hannah Little | Max Plank Institute for Psycholinguistics | Vrije Universiteit Brussel | Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Arbitrary communication systems can emerge from iconic beginnings through processes of conventionalisation via interaction. Here, we explore whether this process of conventionalisation occurs with continuous, auditory signals. We conducted an artificial signalling experiment. Participants either created signals for themselves, or for a partner in a communication game. We found no evidence that the speech-like signals in our experiment became less iconic or simpler through interaction. We hypothesise that the reason for our results is that when it is difficult to be iconic initially because of the constraints of the modality, then iconicity needs to emerge to enable grounding before conventionalisation can occur. Further, pressures for discrimination, caused by the expanding meaning space in our study, may cause more complexity to emerge, again as a result of the restrictive signalling modality. Our findings have possible implications for the processes of conventionalisation possible in signed and spoken languages, as the spoken modality is more restrictive than the manual modality.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Our study
- 2.1Hypotheses
- 3.Experiment
- 3.1Signals
- 3.2Meanings
- 3.3Conditions
- 3.4Individual condition
- 3.5Communication condition
- 3.6Procedure
- 3.7Analysis of signals
- 3.8Results
- 3.9Signals
- 4.Signal recognition
- 4.1Recognition of signals within the experiment
- 4.2Recognition of signals by naïve listeners
- 5.Discussion and further work
- 6.Conclusion
- Acknowledgements
-
References
Published online: 08 December 2017
https://doi.org/10.1075/is.18.3.04lit
https://doi.org/10.1075/is.18.3.04lit
References
Brennan, S. E., & Clark, H. H.
Caldwell, C. A., & Smith, K.
Carr, J. W., Smith, K., Cornish, H., & Kirby, S.
Ehret, K., & Szmrecsanyi, B.
Eryilmaz, K., & Little, H.
Galantucci, B., & Garrod, S.
Garrod, S., Fay, N., Lee, J., Oberlander, J., & MacLeod, T.
Goldin-Meadow, S., & McNeill, D.
Healey, P. G., Swoboda, N., Umata, I., & King, J.
Imai, M., & Kita, S.
Kirby, S., Cornish, H., & Smith, K.
Kirby, S., Tamariz, M., Cornish, H., & Smith, K.
Motamedi, Y., Schouwstra, M., Smith, K., & Kirby, S.
(2016) Linguistic structure emerges in the cultural evolution of artificial sign languages. In S. G. Roberts, C. Cuskley, L. McCrohon, L. Barcelo-Coblijn, O. Feher, & T. Verhoef (Eds.), The evolution of language: Proceedings of the 11th international conference (evolang 11) (pp. 493–495).
Namboodiripad, S., Lenzen, D., Lepic, R., & Verhoef, T.
Perlman, M., Dale, R., & Lupyan, G.
Roberts, G., & Galantucci, B.
Roberts, G., Lewandowski, J., & Galantucci, B.
Sandler, W., Aronoff, M., Meir, I., & Padden, C.
Schlehofer, D.
Theisen, C. A., Oberlander, J., & Kirby, S.
Verhoef, T., Kirby, S., & Boer, B.
Cited by
Cited by 3 other publications
Cuskley, Christine
Kempe, Vera, Nicolas Gauvrit, Nikolay Panayotov, Sheila Cunningham & Monica Tamariz
THOMPSON, BILL, MARCUS PERLMAN, GARY LUPYAN, ZED SEVCIKOVA SEHYR & KAREN EMMOREY
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 15 april 2022. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.