Social biases can lead to less communicatively efficient languages.
Language is subject to a variety of pressures. Recent work has documented that many aspects of language structure have properties that appear to be shaped by biases for the efficient communication of semantic meaning. Other work has investigated the role of social pressures, whereby linguistic varia...
| Publicado en: | Language Acquisition Vol. 30; no. 3/4; pp. 230 - 256 |
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| Autores principales: | , , |
| Formato: | Artículo |
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Taylor & Francis Ltd
Jul-Dec2023
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ssf&AN=164555978&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: ssf uiTerm: 164555978 longDbName: Social Sciences Full Text (H.W. Wilson) uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 10489223 7MI jtl: Language Acquisition issn: 10489223 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Jul-Dec2023 vid: 30 iid: 3/4 pid: 377 pub: Taylor & Francis Ltd artinfo: ui: 164555978 10.1080/10489223.2022.2057229 ppf: 230 ppct: 26 formats: tig: atl: Social biases can lead to less communicatively efficient languages. aug: au: Fedzechkina, Masha Hall Hartley, Lucy Roberts, Gareth affil: Department of Linguistics, Graduate Interdisciplinary Program in Cognitive Science, Graduate Interdisciplinary Program in Second Language Acquisition and Teaching, University of Arizona Department of Linguistics, University of Arizona Department of Linguistics, University of Pennsylvania su: Dialects Linguistic change Social pressure Language & languages Language ability testing sug: subj: Dialects Linguistic change Social pressure Language & languages Language ability testing ab: Language is subject to a variety of pressures. Recent work has documented that many aspects of language structure have properties that appear to be shaped by biases for the efficient communication of semantic meaning. Other work has investigated the role of social pressures, whereby linguistic variants can acquire positive or negative evaluation based on who is perceived to be using them. While the influence of these two sets of biases on language change has been well documented, they have typically been treated separately, in distinct lines of research. We used a miniature language paradigm to test how these biases interact in language change. Specifically, we asked whether pressures to mark social meaning can lead linguistic systems to become less efficient at communicating semantic meaning. We exposed participants to a miniature language with uninformative constituent order and two dialects, one that employed case and one that did not. In the instructions, we socially biased participants toward users of the case dialect, users of the no-case dialect, or neither. Learners biased toward the no-case dialect dropped informative case, thus creating a linguistic system with high message uncertainty. They failed to compensate for this increased message uncertainty even after additional exposure to the novel language. Case was retained in all other conditions. These findings suggest that social biases not only interact with biases for efficient communication in language change but also can lead to linguistic systems that are less efficient at communicating semantic meaning. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: N holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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