Many languages exhibit constraints on prosodic words, where lexical items must be composed of at least two moras structure, or a binary foot. Demuth and Fee (1995) proposed that children demonstrate early sensitivity to word-minimality effects, exhibiting period vowel lengthening epenthesis if coda consonants cannot produced. This paper evaluates this proposal by examining the development word-final in spontaneous speech four English-speaking between ages one two. Although there was no...

The status of subject clitics in French has been heavily debated (Kayne 1975, Rizzi 1986, Roberge 1990, Auger 1994b, Miller & Sag 1997, De Cat 2007b, and many others). Distributional properties have led Kayne (1975), (1986), others to analyze them as argument-bearing elements occupying canonical position, cliticizing the verb only at level phonology. While this hypothesis enjoys a wide following, growing body evidence suggests that it fails capture patterns subject-clitic use colloquial...

Researchers in linguistics and related fields have recently begun exploiting online crowd-sourcing tools, like Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT), to gather behavioral data. While this method has been successfully validated for various offline measures—grammaticality judgment or other forced-choice tasks—its use mainstream psycholinguistic research remains limited. This is because effects are often dependent on relatively small differences response times, there some doubt as whether precise timing...

Although it is widely agreed that learning the syntax of natural languages involves acquiring structure-dependent rules, recent work on acquisition has nevertheless attempted to characterize outcome primarily in terms statistical generalizations about surface distributional information. In this paper we investigate whether knowledge or structural English used infer properties a novel language under conditions impoverished input. We expose learners artificial-language patterns are equally...

Who are the best subjects for judgment tasks intended to test grammatical hypotheses? Michael Devitt ([2006a], [2006b]) argues, on basis of a hypothesis concerning psychology such judgments, that linguists themselves are. We present empirical evidence suggesting relevant divide is not between and non-linguists, but with without minimally sufficient task-specific knowledge. In particular, we show at least some minimal exposure or knowledge tend perform consistently one another—greater...

Cross-linguistically, lexicons tend to be more phonetically clustered than required by the phonotactics of language; that is, words within a language are similar each other they need be. In this study, we investigate how property evolves under influence competing communicative pressures: production-side pressure re-use easily articulated sounds, and comprehension-side for distinctiveness wordforms. an exemplar-based computational model communication experiment using miniature artificial...

Languages exhibit a tremendous amount of variation in how they organise and order morphemes within words; however, regularities are also found. For example, gender number inflectional morphology tend to appear together single affix. In the relatively rare cases which as two separate affixes, encoding information tends be placed closer stem than is. Alternative theories have been designed (in part) explain these tendencies. However, typological data very sparse, making it difficult find clear...

In nominal classification systems, both form (i.e., morphology, phonology or both) and meaning often interact to determine the class gender of noun. Bantu languages in particular, linguistic analysis has put emphasis on meaning, inherent evaluative (e.g., diminutive). However, recent quantitative studies have argued that morphophonology – ubiquitous prefixes serve as cues Bantu, with their robustness specific aspects potentially differing across individual languages. Here, we conducted an...

Morphosyntactic expression exhibits significant cross-linguistic variation, yet systematic tendencies emerge. Gender and number features are frequently co-expressed within a single exponent, when realised separately, gender morphology tends to surface closer the stem. Competing theoretical accounts of seek explain these tendencies, but empirical validation remains challenging due sparse typological data. Across series artificial language learning experiments, we demonstrate that learners...

Abstract Morphosyntactic expression exhibits significant cross-linguistic variation, yet systematic tendencies emerge. Gender and number features are frequently co-expressed within a single exponent, when realized separately, gender morphology tends to surface closer the stem. Competing theoretical accounts of seek explain these tendencies, but empirical validation remains challenging due sparse typological data. Across series artificial language learning experiments, we demonstrate that...

Cross-category harmony is the tendency for languages to use consistent orders of heads and dependents across different types phrases. For example, tend either place both verbs adpositions before their (e.g., 'seethe girl', 'tothe store' as in English) or after 'the girlsee', storeto' Turkish). Harmony has been argued reflect a cognitive bias simpler rules: single high level abstract rule learn than multiple rules, one each type head dependent (Culbertson Kirby, 2016). This supported by...

Abstract: Cross-category harmony is one of the most well-known typological universals. It describes a trend consistent alignment different syntactic categories across phrases within language. Explanations for this universal vary as to whether cognitive factors play role or tendency instead due mechanisms language change alone. In article we report series artificial learning experiments that aim test hypothesized link between cognition and cross-category harmony. As with itself, find mixed...

Michael Devitt ([2006a], [2006b]) argues that, insofar as linguists possess better theories about language than non-linguists, their linguistic intuitions are more reliable. (Culbertson and Gross [2009]) presented empirical evidence contrary to this claim. ([2010]) replies in part because we overemphasize the distinction between acceptability grammaticality, misunderstand linguists' claims, fall into inconsistency, fail see how our results can be squared with his position. We reply note....

Abstract The study of language typology has played a critical role in revealing potential constraints on possible linguistic systems. Such constraints, often called “typological universals” have long been used to support foundational premise generative linguistics—that languages share set underlying commonalities. However, recent research challenged the idea that typological universals—which (at least surface) are statistical tendencies rather than absolute laws—reflect meaningful biases or...