Lindblom, Bjrn(1996), Systemic constraints and adaptive change in the formation of sound structure, in: James R. Hurford, Michael Studdert-Kennedy and Chris Knight, Evolution of Language: Social and Cognitive Bases for the Emergence of Phonology and Syntax  Home/Search   Document Not in Database   Summary   Related Articles   Check

....language is a functional one. Sound systems are explained by assuming that they are based on minimal articulatory and cognitive effort and maximal perceptual contrast. Especially in the area of vowel systems, this approach has been particularly successful. Liljencrants and Lindblom [10] Lindblom [13], Carr and Mrayati [3] and Bo et al. 2] showed, using computer simulations, that vowel systems can be explained by a maximisation of the acoustical contrast, while at the same time minimising the articulatory gestures that are needed. Observations of consonant systems of a wide range of languages ....

.... computer simulations to investigate these observations have been done yet because of the more complex articulatory and perceptual characteristics of consonants (for a simulation of simple syllables see Lindblom et al. 11] In the computer simulations of Liljencrants and Lindblom [10] Lindblom [13], and of Bo et al. 2] it is assumed that one can assign an energy function to vowel systems. This function has higher energy for systems with their vowels closer together and for systems that need more articulatory gestures. One then minimises this energy function for a given number of vowels. ....

[Article contains additional citation context not shown here]

Lindblom, Bjrn(1996), Systemic constraints and adaptive change in the formation of sound structure, in: James R. Hurford, Michael Studdert-Kennedy and Chris Knight, Evolution of Language: Social and Cognitive Bases for the Emergence of Phonology and Syntax

.... that there are competing motivations or conflicting pressures deriving from both the social and functional exigencies of language production, comprehension and acquisition has been developed by linguists working from many different perspectives (e.g. Langacker, 1977; Fodor, 1981; Croft, 1990:192f; Lindblom, 1998; Nettle, 1999:32f) For example, pressure for articulatory economy in production may conflict with pressure for ease of decoding in comprehension, while social pressure for intergroup variation will tend to diffuse variants regardless of their functional adaptiveness. In general, little progress ....

....language very similar to that taken here. The earliest post generative proposals that languages be viewed as adaptive systems of which I am aware are Lindblom (1986) and Hurford (1987) though this position is articulated far more clearly in more recent work such as Hurford (1999) Kirby (1999) Lindblom (1998), and Nettle (1999) Though the view that languages evolve has a generally bad press in linguistic theory, it is worth reconsidering as the neo Darwinian synthesis and subsequent analytic and algorithmic thinking about evolution and dynamical systems makes available a panoply of new perspectives ....

Lindblom, Bjorn (1998) `Systemic constraints and adaptive change in the formation of sound structure' in Jim Hurford, Michael Studdert-Kennedy and Chris Knight (ed.), Approaches to the Evolution of Language, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 242--264.

.... and acquisition has been developed by linguists working from many different perspectives (e.g. Langacker, 1977; Fodor, 1981; Croft, 1990:192f) In linguistics little progress has been made in quantifying these pressures or exploring their interaction, except in the area of phonology where Lindblom (e.g. 1998) has adopted a similar evolutionary model to that advocated here. Evolution is not a process of steady improvement along a single trajectory leading to a single optimal solution. Sewall Wright (1931) introduced into evolutionary theory the idea of adaptive or fitness landscapes with multiple local ....

Lindblom, B. (1998) `Systemic constraints and adaptive change in the formation of sound structure' in Hurford, J., Studdert-Kennedy, M., and Knight, C. (ed.), Approaches to the Evolution of Language, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 242--264.

....to account for all the sounds found in world s languages. We espouse however a radically different point of view, which posits that sound system universals emerge from the basic characteristics of the speech production and perception mechanisms as well as from the speaker listener interaction (cf. [6]) The main notion related to this approach is that of functional efficiency also found in evolutionary studies, and means that nature will favour organisms (in our case: sound systems) that adapt, or fit, the best to the environment (in our case: that allow the best accomplishment of the ....

.... listeners have to agree on a common code, and that (2) speakers can modulate the physical realisation of the utterances as a function of environmental conditions, like noise, and extra linguistic information, as long as the listener is able to decode the message (cf. Lindblom s hypo hyper scale [6]) An important question immediately raises: how are the perceptual objectives negotiated The answer to this question lies in a deep comprehension of the mechanisms involved in speaker listener interactions. Of course, this is a overwhelming task. In the simulations presented here, we implemented ....

[Article contains additional citation context not shown here]

Lindblom, B. (1996) Systemic constraints and adaptive change in the formation of sound structure. Evolution of Human Language, In Hurford, J. (Ed), Edinburgh Univ. Press., Edinburgh.

Online articles have much greater impact   More about CiteSeer.IST   Add search form to your site   Submit documents   Feedback  

CiteSeer.IST - Copyright Penn State and NEC