Innovation of Word Order Harmony Across Development.
Innovation of Word Order Harmony Across Development.
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DOI：
10.1162/opmi_a_00010
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发表时间：
2017-01-01
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
Newport, Elissa L
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Culbertson, Jennifer;Newport, Elissa L
自20世纪60年代以来，人们就注意到语言使用和谐词序模式的趋势，即词头相对于修饰语或其他附属词处于一致的位置。与许多其他统计类型学倾向一样，关于和谐是否反映了人类认知的特性或外部力量的争论一直存在。最近使用实验室语言学习的研究表明，儿童和成人发现谐波模式比非谐波模式更容易学习（Culbertson & Newport, 2015; Culbertson, Smolensky, & Legendre, 2012）。这支持了学习和类型学频率之间的联系：如果谐和模式更容易学习，而非谐和模式更有可能成为变化的目标，那么，在所有条件相同的情况下，谐和模式将在世界语言中更频繁。然而，这些先前的研究依赖于输入的变化作为实验室变化的机制；学习者接触到不同的词序，允许他们改变不同顺序的频率，从而使谐音模式变得更频繁。在这里，我们教成人和儿童学习者的语言始终是非调和的，没有变化。当成年人完美地保持这些一贯的非和谐模式时，幼儿学习者创新新的顺序，将非和谐模式变为和谐模式。
The tendency for languages to use harmonic word order patterns-orders that place heads in a consistent position with respect to modifiers or other dependents-has been noted since the 1960s. As with many other statistical typological tendencies, there has been debate regarding whether harmony reflects properties of human cognition or forces external to it. Recent research using laboratory language learning has shown that children and adults find harmonic patterns easier to learn than nonharmonic patterns (Culbertson & Newport, 2015; Culbertson, Smolensky, & Legendre, 2012). This supports a link between learning and typological frequency: if harmonic patterns are easier to learn, while nonharmonic patterns are more likely to be targets of change, then, all things equal, harmonic patterns will be more frequent in the world's languages. However, these previous studies relied on variation in the input as a mechanism for change in the lab; learners were exposed to variable word order, allowing them to shift the frequencies of different orders so that harmonic patterns became more frequent. Here we teach adult and child learners languages that are consistently nonharmonic, with no variation. While adults perfectly maintain these consistently nonharmonic patterns, young child learners innovate novel orders, changing nonharmonic patterns into harmonic ones.