Article published in:
Interaction and Iconicity in the Evolution of Language
Edited by Stefan Hartmann, Michael Pleyer, James Winters and Jordan Zlatev
[Interaction Studies 18:3] 2017
► pp. 402–442

Conversation, cognition and cultural evolution

A model of the cultural evolution of word order through pressures imposed from turn taking in conversation

| University of Bristol | University of Bristol | Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics | Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics
| Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics | Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics | Radboud University | Radboud University
This paper outlines a first attempt to model the special constraints that arise in language processing in conversation, and to explore the implications such functional considerations may have on language typology and language change. In particular, we focus on processing pressures imposed by conversational turn-taking and their consequences for the cultural evolution of the structural properties of language. We present an agent-based model of cultural evolution where agents take turns at talk in conversation. When the start of planning for the next turn is constrained by the position of the verb, the stable distribution of dominant word orders across languages evolves to match the actual distribution reasonably well. We suggest that the interface of cognition and interaction should be a more central part of the story of language evolution.
Keywords: turn taking, pragmatics, typology, word order, cultural evolution
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1A cognitive pressure derived from turn taking
    • 1.2Linking processing and pragmatics
  • 2.Identifying the target phenomenon
  • 3.A computational agent based model of turn taking
    • 3.1Cultural evolution
    • 3.2Sentence particles
    • 3.3Summary of assumptions
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Sentence final particles
  • 5.Discussion
    • 5.1Relationship with other theories and future work
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 08 December 2017
https://doi.org/10.1075/is.18.3.06rob
References
Altmann, G. T. M.
(1999) Thematic role assignment in context. Journal of Memory and Language, 411, 124–45. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
(2004) Language-mediated eye movements in the absence of a visual world: The ‘blank screen paradigm’. Cognition, 931, 79–87. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Austin, P.
(2001) Word order in a free word order language: the case of Jiwarli. In J. Simpson, D. Nash, M. Laughren, P. Austin, & B. Alpher (Eds.), Forty years on: Ken Hale and Australian languages (pp. 205–323). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.Google Scholar
Barthel, M., Sauppe, S., Levinson, S. C., & Meyer, A. S.
(2016) The timing of utterance planning in task-oriented dialogue: Evidence from a novel list-completion paradigm. Frontiers in Psychology, 71, 1858. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bentz, C., & Christiansen, M. H.
(2010) Linguistic adaptation at work? The change of word order and case system from Latin to the Romance languages. In A. Smith, M. Schouwstra, B. de Boer, & K. Smith (Eds.), Proceedings of the eighth international conference on the evolution of language (pp. 26–33). London: World Scientific.Google Scholar
Bowern, C.
(2012) A grammar of Bardi. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Blasi, D. E., Wichmann, S., Hammarström, H., Stadler, P. F., & Christiansen, M. H.
(2016) Sound–meaning association biases evidenced across thousands of languages. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113(39): 10818–23. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bögels, S., Kendrick, K. H., & Levinson, S. C.
(2015) Never Say No… How the brain interprets the pregnant pause in conversation. PloS One, 10(12), e0145474. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bögels, S., & Levinson, S. C.
(2016) The brain behind the response: Insights into turn-taking in conversation from neuroimaging. Research on Language and Social Interaction. Advance online publication.Google Scholar
Bögels, S., Magyari, L., & Levinson, S. C.
(2015) Neural signatures of response planning occur midway through an incoming question in conversation. Scientific Reports, 51, 12881. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Christensen, P., Fusaroli, R., & Tylén, K.
(2016) Environmental constraints shaping constituent order in emerging communication systems: Structural iconicity, interactive alignment and conventionalization. Cognition, 1461, 67–80. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Christiansen, M. H., & Chater, N.
(2008) Language as shaped by the brain. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 31(5), 489–509. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Croft, W.
(2000) Explaining language change: An evolutionary approach. Harlow, Essex: Longman.Google Scholar
Dingemanse, M., Roberts, S. G., Baranova, J., Blythe, J., Drew, P., Floyd, S., Gisladottir, R. S., Kendrick, K. H., Levinson, S. C., Manrique, E., Rossi, G., & Enfield, N. J.
(2015) Universal principles in the repair of communication problems. PloS One, 10(9), e0136100. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Donders, F. C.
(1868) La vitesse des actes psychiques. Archives Néerlandaise, 31, 269–317.Google Scholar
Dryer, M. S.
(2013a) Order of subject, object and verb. In Matthew S. Dryer & M. Haspelmath (Eds.), The world atlas of language structures online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Available online: http://​wals​.info​/chapter​/81, Accessed on 2017-01-11.Google Scholar
(2013b) Position of polar question particles. In Matthew S. Dryer & M. Haspelmath (Eds.), The world atlas of language structures online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Available online: http://​wals​.info​/chapter​/92, Accessed on 2017-01-13.Google Scholar
Dunn, M., Greenhill, S. J., Levinson, S. C., & Gray, R. D.
(2011) Evolved structure of language shows lineage-specific trends in word-order universals. Nature, 473(7345), 79–82. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Duranti, A.
(1981) The Samoan fono: A sociolinguistic study (No. 80). Pacific Linguistics Series B, 801. Department of Linguistics, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University.Google Scholar
Enfield, N. J.
(2008) Language as shaped by social interaction. Behavioral and brain sciences, 31(5), 519–520. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Fedzechkina, M., Jaeger, T. F., & Newport, E. L.
(2012) Language learners restructure their input to facilitate efficient communication. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109(44), 17897–17902. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Ferrer-i Cancho, R.
(2008) Some word order biases from limited brain resources: A mathematical approach. Advances in Complex Systems, 11(3), 393–414. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Ferrer-i-Cancho, R.
(2014) Why might SOV be initially preferred and then lost or recovered? A theoretical framework. In E. A. Cartmill, S. Roberts, H. Lyn, & H. Cornish (Eds.), The evolution of language – Proceedings of the 10th International Conference (EVOLANG10), Evolution of Language Conference (Evolang 2014) (pp. 66–73). Vienna, Austria, April 14–17.Google Scholar
(2015) The placement of the head that minimizes online memory. A complex systems approach. Language Dynamics and Change, 5(1), 114–137. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
(2016) Kauffman's adjacent possible in word order evolution. In S. G. Roberts, C. Cuskley, L. McCrohon, L. Barceló-Coblijn, O. Fehér, & T. Verhoef (Eds.), The evolution of language: Proceedings of the 11th International Conference (EVOLANG11) . Available online: http://​evolang​.org​/neworleans​/papers​/83​.html.
Garrod, S., & Pickering, M. J.
(2009) Joint action, interactive alignment, and dialog. Topics in Cognitive Science, 1(2), 292–304. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Gell-Mann, M., & Ruhlen, M.
(2011) The origin and evolution of word order. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(42), 17290–17295. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Gibson, E., Piantadosi, S. T., Brink, K., Bergen, L., Lim, E., & Saxe, R.
(2013) A noisy-channel account of crosslinguistic word-order variation. Psychological Science, 24(7), 1079–1088. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Gisladottir, R. S., Chwilla, D., & Levinson, S. C.
(2015) Conversation electrified: ERP correlates of speech act recognition in underspecified utterances. PLoS One, 10(3), e0120068. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Givón, T.
(1983a) Topic continuity in discourse: A quantitative cross-language study. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
(1983b) Topic continuity in discourse: An Introduction. In T. Givón (Ed.), Topic continuity in discourseTopic continuity in discourse: A quantitative cross-language study. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Goldin-Meadow, S., So, W. C., Özyürek, A., & Mylander, C.
(2008) The natural order of events: How speakers of different languages represent events non- verbally. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105(27), 9163–9168. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hale, K.
(1992) Basic word order in two “free word order” languages. In D. Payne (Ed.), Pragmatics of word order flexibility (pp. 63–82). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Haspelmath, M., Dryer, M. S., Gil, D., & Comrie, B.
(2008) World Atlas of Language Structures. Munich: Max Planck Digital Library. Available online: http://​wals​.info. Accessed on 2013-04-18.Google Scholar
Hawkins, J.
(1994) A performance theory of order and constituency. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hawkins, J. A.
(2004) Efficiency and complexity in grammars. Oxford: Oxford University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hick, W. E.
(1952) On the rate of gain of information. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 4(1), 11–26. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Horn, L.
(1984) Toward a new taxonomy for pragmatic inference: Q-based and R-based implicature. In D. Schiffrin (Ed.), Meaning, form, and use in context: Linguistic applications (pp. 11–42). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Reprinted in Kasher (ed., 1998), vol. IV: 389–418.Google Scholar
Indefrey, P.
(2011) The spatial and temporal signatures of word production components: A critical update. Frontiers in Psychology, 2(255), 1–16. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Jaeger, T. F.
(2010) Redundancy and reduction: Speakers manage syntactic information density. Cognitive Psychology, 61(1), 23–62. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Jaeger, T. F., & Levy, R. P.
(2006) Speakers optimize information density through syntactic reduction. In P. B. Schölkopf, J. C. Platt, & T. Hoffman (Eds.), Advances in neural information processing systems 19 (pp. 849–856). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Kamide, Y.
(2008) Anticipatory processes in sentence processing. Language and Linguistics Compass, 2(4), 647–670. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kamide, Y., Altmann, G. T., & Haywood, S. L.
(2003) The time-course of prediction in incremental sentence processing: Evidence from anticipatory eye-movements. Journal of Memory and Language, 491, 133–159. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kendrick, K. H.
(2012) Particles at the transition space. Talk presented at the Interactional Foundations of Language Meeting , Kreuth, Germany, 2012-11-01–2012-11-02.
(2015) The intersection of turn-taking and repair: The timing of other-initiations of repair in conversation. Frontiers in psychology, 61, 250. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kendrick, K. H., & Torreira, F.
(2015) The timing and construction of preference: A quantitative study. Discourse Processes, 52(4), 255–289. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kirby, S., Griffiths, T., & Smith, K.
(2014) Iterated learning and the evolution of language. Current opinion in neurobiology, 281, 108–114. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Knoeferle, P., Crocker, M. W., Scheepers, C., & Pickering, M. J.
(2005) The influence of the immediate visual context on in cremental thematic role assignment: Evidence from eye-movements in depicted events. Cognition, 951, 95–127. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Krupa, V.
(1982) Syntactic typology and linearization. Language, 58(3), 639–645. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Langus, A., & Nespor, M.
(2010) Cognitive systems struggling for word order. Cognitive Psychology, 60(4), 291–318. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Levelt, W. J., Roelofs, A., & Meyer, A. S.
(1999) A theory of lexical access in speech production. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 22(1), 1–38. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Levinson, S.
(2006) On the human interaction engine. In N. Enfield & S. Levinson (Eds.), Roots of human sociality: Culture, cognition and human interaction (pp. 39–69). Oxford: Berg.Google Scholar
Levinson, S. C.
(1983) Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
(2016) Turn-taking in human communication–origins and implications for language processing. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 20(1), 6–14. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Lupyan, G., & Christiansen, M. H.
(2002) Case, word order, and language learnability: Insights from connectionist modeling. In Proceedings of the 24th annual conference of the cognitive science society (pp. 596–601). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Maurits, L., Perfors, A., & Navarro, D.
(2010) Why are some word orders more common than others? A uniform information density account. Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems, 231, 1585–1593.Google Scholar
Mithun, M.
(1992) Is basic word order universal? In D. Payne (Ed.), Pragmatics of word order flexibility (pp. 15–62). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Nowak, I., & Baggio, G.
(2016) The emergence of word order and morphology in compositional languages via multigenerational signaling games. Journal of Language Evolution, 1(2), 137–150. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Ochs, E.
(1982) Ergativity and word order in Samoan child language. Language, 58(3), 646–671. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Ochs, E., Schegloff, E. A., & Thompson, S. A.
(1996) Interaction and grammar, Vol. 131. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Piantadosi, S. T., Tily, H., & Gibson, E.
(2011) Word lengths are optimized for efficient communication. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(9), 3526–3529. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Reali, F., & Christiansen, M. H.
(2009) Sequential learning and the interaction between biological and linguistic adaptation in language evolution. Interaction Studies, 101, 5–30. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Roberts, F., Margutti, P., & Takano, S.
(2011) Judgments concerning the valence of inter-turn silence across speakers of American English, Italian, and Japanese. Discourse Processes, 48(5), 331–354. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Roberts, S. G., Torreira, F., & Levinson, S. C.
(2015) The effects of processing and sequence organisation on the timing of turn taking: A corpus study. Frontiers in Psychology, 61, 509. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Roberts, S., & Winters, J.
(2013) Linguistic diversity and traffic accidents: Lessons from statistical studies of cultural traits. PloS One, 8(8), e70902. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
de Ruiter, J. P., Mitterer, H., & Enfield, N. J.
(2006) Projecting the end of a speaker's turn: A cognitive cornerstone of conversation. Language, 82(3), 515–535. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Sacks, H., Schegloff, E. A., & Jefferson, G.
(1974) A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation. Language, 40(4), 696–735. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Sauppe, S.
(2016) Verbal semantics drives early anticipatory eye movements during the comprehension of verb-initial sentences. Frontiers in Psychology, 71, 95. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Schegloff, E. A.
(1989) Reflections on language, development, and the interactional character of talk-in-interaction. In M. Bornstein & J. S. Bruner (Eds.), Interaction in human development (pp. 139–153). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Schegloff, E. A., Jefferson, G., & Sacks, H.
(1977) The preference for self-correction in the organization of repair in conversation. Language, 531, 361–382. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Schouwstra, M., & de Swart, H.
(2014) The semantic origins of word order. Cognition, 131(3), 431–436. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Steels, L., & Belpaeme, T.
(2005) Coordinating perceptually grounded categories through language: a case study for colour. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 28(4), 469–489. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Stivers, T., Enfield, N. J., Brown, P., Englert, C., Hayashi, M., Heinemann, T., Hoymann, G., Rossano, F., De Ruiter, J. P., Yoon, K.-E., & Levinson, S. C.
(2009) Universals and cultural variation in turn-taking in conversation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106(26), 10587–10592. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Swartz, S.
(1987) Pragmatic structure and word order in Warlpiri. Papers in Australian linguistics, 171, 151–166.Google Scholar
Tamariz, Mónica, et al.
(2017) “The Interactive Origin of Iconicity.” Cognitive Science. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Tanaka, H.
(2000) Turn projection in Japanese talk-in-interaction. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 33(1), 1–38. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
(2005) Grammar and the “timing” of social action: Word order and preference organization in Japanese. Language in Society, 34(3), 389–430. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Thompson, S. A.
(1998) A discourse explanation for the cross-linguistic differences in the grammar of interrogation and negation. In A. Siewierska & J. J. Song (Eds.), Case, typology and grammar: In honor of Barry J. Blake (pp. 307–341). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Tomlin, R. S.
(1986) Basic word order: Functional principles. London: Croom Helm.Google Scholar
Van Valin, R. D., & LaPolla, R. J.
(1997) Syntax: Structure, meaning, and function. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Verhoef, T., Roberts, S. G. & Dingemanse, M.
(2015) Emergence of systematic iconicity: transmission, interaction and analogy. In Proceedings of the 37th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society , 2481–2486. Cognitive Science Society. https://​mindmodeling​.org​/cogsci2015​/papers​/0426​/paper0426​.pdf
Zipf, G. K.
(1949) Human behavior and the principle of least effort. Oxford, England: Addison-Wesley Press.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 7 other publications

Barthel, Mathias & Sebastian Sauppe
2019. Speech Planning at Turn Transitions in Dialog Is Associated With Increased Processing Load. Cognitive Science 43:7 Crossref logo
Dingemanse, Mark
2020. Resource-rationality beyond individual minds: the case of interactive language use. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 43 Crossref logo
Kempson, Ruth, Eleni Gregoromichelaki & Christine Howes
2019.  In Language, Logic, and Computation [Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 11456], ► pp. 209 ff. Crossref logo
Motamedi, Yasamin, Kathryn Montemurro, Natasha Abner, Molly Flaherty, Simon Kirby & Susan Goldin-Meadow
2022. The Seeds of the Noun–Verb Distinction in the Manual Modality: Improvisation and Interaction in the Emergence of Grammatical Categories. Languages 7:2 ► pp. 95 ff. Crossref logo
Rühlemann, Christoph
2020.  In Visual Linguistics with R, Crossref logo
Rühlemann, Christoph
2020. Turn structure and inserts. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 25:2 ► pp. 185 ff. Crossref logo
Slonimska, Anita & Seán G. Roberts
2017. A case for systematic sound symbolism in pragmatics: Universals in wh-words. Journal of Pragmatics 116 ► pp. 1 ff. Crossref logo

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.