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The Adventures of Auck
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A Replicated Typo 2.0
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- August 21, 2010
- 01:56 PM
- 2,343 views
Evolution of Colour Terms: 5 Cultural Constraints
by Sean Roberts in A Replicated Typo 2.0
Continuing my series on the Evolution of Colour terms, this post reviews studies of cultural constraints on colour naming. For the full dissertation and for references, go here.
This section reviews evidence of cultural constraints on colour terms. Modelling has shown that cultural transmission can cause individual categorisations of colour space to converge on shared categories, . . . → Read More: Evolution of Colour Terms: 5 Cultural Constraints... Read more »
Steels, L., & Belpaeme, T. (2005) Coordinating perceptually grounded categories through language: A case study for colour. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 28(04). DOI: 10.1017/S0140525X05000087
Belpaeme, T., & Bleys, J. (2005) Explaining Universal Color Categories Through a Constrained Acquisition Process. Adaptive Behavior, 13(4), 293-310. DOI: 10.1177/105971230501300404
Kirby, S., Cornish, H., & Smith, K. (2008) Cumulative cultural evolution in the laboratory: An experimental approach to the origins of structure in human language. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105(31), 10681-10686. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0707835105
Kirby, S., Dowman, M., & Griffiths, T. (2007) Innateness and culture in the evolution of language. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104(12), 5241-5245. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0608222104
KOMAROVA, N., JAMESON, K., & NARENS, L. (2007) Evolutionary models of color categorization based on discrimination. Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 51(6), 359-382. DOI: 10.1016/j.jmp.2007.06.001
- December 14, 2011
- 07:48 AM
- 1,178 views
The power of diversity: New Scientist recognises the growing work on social structure and linguistic structure
by Sean Roberts in A Replicated Typo 2.0
A feature article in last week’s New Scientist asks why there is so much linguistic diversity present in the world, and what are the forces that drive it. The article reads like a who’s who of the growing field of language structure and social structure. This is practically as close as my subject will come to having a pull-out section in Vanity Fair. Furthermore, it recognises the weakening grip of Chomskyan linguistics.... Read more »
David Robson. (2011) Power of Babel: Why one language isn't enough . New Scientist. info:/
- August 19, 2010
- 06:00 AM
- 1,172 views
Evolution of Colour Terms: 3 Perceptual Constraints
by Sean Roberts in A Replicated Typo 2.0
Continuing my series on the Evolution of Colour terms, this post reviews evidence for perceptual constraints on colour terms. For the full dissertation and for references, go here.
The perceptual space that results from the processing of opponent colours is non-uniform (see Figure below), meaning that there are optimal ways to describe it (Jameson & D’Andrade, . . . → Read More: Evolution of Colour Terms: 3 Perceptual Constraints... Read more »
Jameson, K., & D'Andrade, R.G. (1997) It's not really Red, Green, Yellow, Blue: An Inquiry into cognitive color space. Color Categories in Thought and Language. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511519819.014
Regier, T., Kay, P., & Khetarpal, N. (2007) Color naming reflects optimal partitions of color space. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104(4), 1436-1441. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0610341104
Liljencrants, J., Lindblom, B., & Lindblom, B. (1972) Numerical Simulation of Vowel Quality Systems: The Role of Perceptual Contrast. Language, 48(4), 839. DOI: 10.2307/411991
DEBOER, B. (2000) Self-organization in vowel systems. Journal of Phonetics, 28(4), 441-465. DOI: 10.1006/jpho.2000.0125
Buchsbaum, G. (2002) Color categories revealed by non-negative matrix factorization of Munsell color spectra. Vision Research, 42(5), 559-563. DOI: 10.1016/S0042-6989(01)00303-0
- August 25, 2010
- 05:26 AM
- 1,150 views
Niche Construction in Colour Term Evolution
by Sean Roberts in A Replicated Typo 2.0
Language’s influence on perception can be regarded as a form of Niche Construction. The words we have for colours affects the way in which we co-operate with others to change the world. Therefore, not only does language become better at describing the environment, but the environment becomes better suited to being described by language.... Read more »
Laland, K., Odling-Smee, J., & Feldman, M. (2000) Niche construction, biological evolution, and cultural change. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 23(1), 131-146. DOI: 10.1017/S0140525X00002417
Hansen, T., Olkkonen, M., Walter, S., & Gegenfurtner, K. (2006) Memory modulates color appearance. Nature Neuroscience, 9(11), 1367-1368. DOI: 10.1038/nn1794
Heslop-Harrison, J., & Schwarzacher, T. (2007) Domestication, Genomics and the Future for Banana. Annals of Botany, 100(5), 1073-1084. DOI: 10.1093/aob/mcm191
Griffin, L. (2004) Optimality of the Basic Colours Categories. Journal of Vision, 4(8), 309-309. DOI: 10.1167/4.8.309
- September 24, 2010
- 07:39 AM
- 1,116 views
Alcohol Consumption affects Morphological Complexity
by Sean Roberts in A Replicated Typo 2.0
Recent research suggests that language adapts to the balance between declarative and procedural memory users. Since alcohol consumption affects procedural but not declarative memory (Smith & Smith, 2003), we might expect to see communities that have a high alcohol consumption using less complex morphology...... Read more »
Smith C, & Smith D. (2003) Ingestion of ethanol just prior to sleep onset impairs memory for procedural but not declarative tasks. Sleep, 26(2), 185-91. PMID: 12683478
- March 18, 2011
- 08:27 AM
- 1,064 views
Emergence of linguistic diversity in the lab
by Sean Roberts in A Replicated Typo 2.0
I propose an experiment based on a theory from Nettle (1999) and an experimental paradigm by Roberts (2010) to look at the emergence of stable bilingualism.... Read more »
Roberts, G. (2010) An experimental study of social selection and frequency of interaction in linguistic diversity. Interaction Studies, 11(1), 138-159. DOI: 10.1075/is.11.1.06rob
- August 16, 2010
- 10:26 AM
- 1,002 views
The Evolution of Colour terms
by Sean Roberts in A Replicated Typo 2.0
In a series of posts, I’ll review the current state of the field of the Evolution of Colour Categories. It has been argued that universals in colour naming across cultures can be traced back to constraints from many domains including genetic, perceptual and environmental. I’ll review these arguments and show that if our perception is affected by our language, then many conflicts can be resolved.... Read more »
Mollon, J. (1999) Color vision: Opsins and options. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 96(9), 4743-4745. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.96.9.4743
Bornstein, M. (1973) Color vision and color naming: A psychophysiological hypothesis of cultural difference. Psychological Bulletin, 80(4), 257-285. DOI: 10.1037/h0034837
Jameson, K., & D'Andrade, R.G. (1997) It's not really Red, Green, Yellow, Blue: An Inquiry into cognitive color space. Color Categories in Thought and Language. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511519819.014
Regier, T., Kay, P., & Khetarpal, N. (2007) Color naming reflects optimal partitions of color space. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104(4), 1436-1441. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0610341104
Griffin, L. (2004) Optimality of the Basic Colours Categories. Journal of Vision, 4(8), 309-309. DOI: 10.1167/4.8.309
Ember, M. (1978) Size of Color Lexicon: Interaction of Cultural and Biological Factors. American Anthropologist, 80(2), 364-367. DOI: 10.1525/aa.1978.80.2.02a00100
Lindsey, D., & Brown, A. (2002) Color Naming and the Phototoxic Effects of Sunlight on the Eye. Psychological Science, 13(6), 506-512. DOI: 10.1111/1467-9280.00489
Regier T, & Kay P. (2004) Color naming and sunlight: commentary on Lindsey and Brown (2002). Psychological science : a journal of the American Psychological Society / APS, 15(4), 289. PMID: 15043652
Kuhl PK. (1991) Human adults and human infants show a "perceptual magnet effect" for the prototypes of speech categories, monkeys do not. Perception , 50(2), 93-107. PMID: 1945741
Iverson P, & Kuhl PK. (1995) Mapping the perceptual magnet effect for speech using signal detection theory and multidimensional scaling. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 97(1), 553-62. PMID: 7860832
- August 26, 2010
- 04:26 AM
- 997 views
Universal Patterns in Colour Terms are not Evidence for Innate Constraints
by Sean Roberts in A Replicated Typo 2.0
In a series of posts, I've been discussing constraints on the evolution of colour terms. Here, I discuss the role of drift and argue that universal patterns are not necessarily good evidence for innate constraints.... Read more »
Steels, L., & Belpaeme, T. (2005) Coordinating perceptually grounded categories through language: A case study for colour. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 28(04). DOI: 10.1017/S0140525X05000087
Belpaeme, T. (2005) Explaining Universal Color Categories Through a Constrained Acquisition Process. Adaptive Behavior, 13(4), 293-310. DOI: 10.1177/105971230501300404
Kirby, S., Dowman, M., & Griffiths, T. (2007) Innateness and culture in the evolution of language. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104(12), 5241-5245. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0608222104
- November 19, 2010
- 06:04 AM
- 996 views
Mutual Exclusivity in the Naming Game
by Sean Roberts in A Replicated Typo 2.0
The Naming Game looks at how communication systems evolve in populations of agents. In this post I’ll show that the algorithms used have implicit mutual exclusivity biases, which favour monolingual viewpoints. I’ll also show that this bias is not necessary and obscures some interesting insights into evolutionary dynamics of langauge.... Read more »
Andrea Baronchelli. (2010) Do you agree? Role of feedback and broadcasting in the Naming Game. ArXiv e-prints. arXiv: 1009.4798v1
Vittorio Loreto, Andrea Baronchelli, & Andrea Puglisi. (2009) Mathematical Modeling of Language Games . Evolution of Communication and Language in Embodied Agents. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-01250-1_15
- August 24, 2010
- 05:00 AM
- 943 views
Evolution of Colour Terms: 8 Embodied Relationships
by Sean Roberts in A Replicated Typo 2.0
In a series of posts, I’ve been discussing constraints on the evolution of colour terms. In the last post, I discussed Perceptual Warping. Here, a further adjustment to the assumptions about perceptual space is suggested.
The assumption that all perceptual spaces are the same may be unrealistic and may favour Universalism (see Levinson, 2000). To begin with, . . . → Read More: Evolution of Colour Terms: 8 Embodied Relationships... Read more »
Levinson, S. (2000) Yeli Dnye and the Theory of Basic Color Terms. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 10(1), 3-55. DOI: 10.1525/jlin.2000.10.1.3
Bornstein, M., Kessen, W., & Weiskopf, S. (1976) Color vision and hue categorization in young human infants. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 2(1), 115-129. DOI: 10.1037/0096-1523.2.1.115
Roberson, D., Davidoff, J., Davies, I., & Shapiro, L. (2004) The Development of Color Categories in Two Languages: A Longitudinal Study. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 133(4), 554-571. DOI: 10.1037/0096-3445.133.4.554
- August 24, 2010
- 07:35 AM
- 884 views
Perceptual Warping of Colour
by Sean Roberts in The Adventures of Auck
There is evidence that categorisations can influence perception, which has been identified as a crucial argument for Relativism. In this post, the idea of perceptual warping is explained and applied to colour categorisation.... Read more »
DEBOER, B. (2000) Self-organization in vowel systems. Journal of Phonetics, 28(4), 441-465. DOI: 10.1006/jpho.2000.0125
Goldstone, R. (1994) Influences of categorization on perceptual discrimination. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 123(2), 178-200. DOI: 10.1037//0096-3445.123.2.178
Kuhl, P. (1994) Learning and representation in speech and language. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 4(6), 812-822. DOI: 10.1016/0959-4388(94)90128-7
Miyawaki, K., Strange, W., Verbrugge, R. R., Liberman, A. M., Jenkins, J. J., & Fujimura, O. (1975) An effect of linguistic experience: The discrimination of (r) and (l) by native speakers of Japanese and English . Perception and Psychophysics, 331-340. info:/
KUHL, P. (1983) Perception of auditory equivalence classes for speech in early infancy. Infant Behavior and Development, 6(2-3), 263-285. DOI: 10.1016/S0163-6383(83)80036-8
Lupyan G. (2008) From chair to "chair": a representational shift account of object labeling effects on memory. Journal of experimental psychology. General, 137(2), 348-69. PMID: 18473663
Buchsbaum, G. (2002) Color categories revealed by non-negative matrix factorization of Munsell color spectra. Vision Research, 42(5), 559-563. DOI: 10.1016/S0042-6989(01)00303-0
Connell, L., & Lynott, D. (2009) Is a bear white in the woods? Parallel representation of implied object color during language comprehension. Psychonomic Bulletin , 16(3), 573-577. DOI: 10.3758/PBR.16.3.573
- April 8, 2011
- 10:02 AM
- 864 views
Colour terms and national flags
by Sean Roberts in A Replicated Typo 2.0
Today, I wondered whether the number of basic colour terms a language has is reflected in the number of colours on its country’s flag. The idea being that a country’s flag contains colours that are important to its society, and therefore a country with more social tools for discussing colour (colour words) will be more likely to put more colours on its flag. It was a long shot, but here’s what I found:... Read more »
Lupyan G, & Dale R. (2010) Language structure is partly determined by social structure. PloS one, 5(1). PMID: 20098492
- January 11, 2010
- 09:46 AM
- 847 views
Mutual Exclusivity Diagrams
by Sean Roberts in The Adventures of Auck
Some diagrams of experiments into the Mutual Exclusivity bias in children's word learning.... Read more »
Au TK, & Glusman M. (1990) The principle of mutual exclusivity in word learning: to honor or not to honor?. Child development, 61(5), 1474-90. PMID: 2245739
Byers-Heinlein, K., & Werker, J. (2009) Monolingual, bilingual, trilingual: infants' language experience influences the development of a word-learning heuristic. Developmental Science, 12(5), 815-823. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-7687.2009.00902.x
Jaswal VK, & Hansen MB. (2006) Learning words: children disregard some pragmatic information that conflicts with mutual exclusivity. Developmental science, 9(2), 158-65. PMID: 16472316
Grassmann, S., & Tomasello, M. (2010) Young children follow pointing over words in interpreting acts of reference. Developmental Science, 13(1), 252-263. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-7687.2009.00871.x
Healey, E. and Scarabela, B. (2009) Are children willing to accept two labels for one object?. Proceedings of the Child Language Seminar. University of Reading. info:/
- May 18, 2011
- 01:00 PM
- 843 views
The end of Universals?
by Sean Roberts in The Adventures of Auck
Dunn et al. (2011) has come in for a lot of flack, but are the differences in dependencies between language families really all that different?... Read more »
Michael Dunn,, Simon J. Greenhill,, Stephen C. Levinson, & . (2011) Evolved structure of language shows lineage-specific trends in word-order universals. Nature, 79-82. info:/
- May 6, 2011
- 04:38 AM
- 837 views
Bayesian phylogenetic analysis of Japonic languages
by Sean Roberts in A Replicated Typo 2.0
Lee & Hasagawa (2011) use phylogenetic methods to trace the origins of Japonic languages and dialects.... Read more »
Lee S, & Hasegawa T. (2011) Bayesian phylogenetic analysis supports an agricultural origin of Japonic languages. Proceedings. Biological sciences / The Royal Society. PMID: 21543358
Gray, R., Drummond, A., & Greenhill, S. (2009) Language Phylogenies Reveal Expansion Pulses and Pauses in Pacific Settlement. Science, 323(5913), 479-483. DOI: 10.1126/science.1166858
- June 15, 2011
- 12:15 AM
- 835 views
Cultural Evolution and the Impending Singularity
by Sean Roberts in A Replicated Typo 2.0
Prof. Alfred Hulber is an actual mad professor who is a danger to life as we know it. In a talk this evening he went from ball bearings in castor oil to hyper-advanced machine intelligence. However, will hyper-intelligent machines actually give us a better scientific understanding of the universe, or will they just spend their time playing tetris?... Read more »
Sperl, M., Chang, A., Weber, N., & Hübler, A. (1999) Hebbian learning in the agglomeration of conducting particles. Physical Review E, 59(3), 3165-3168. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevE.59.3165
Bettencourt LM, Lobo J, Helbing D, Kühnert C, & West GB. (2007) Growth, innovation, scaling, and the pace of life in cities. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 104(17), 7301-6. PMID: 17438298
West, G. (1997) A General Model for the Origin of Allometric Scaling Laws in Biology. Science, 276(5309), 122-126. DOI: 10.1126/science.276.5309.122
Chater N, & Christiansen MH. (2010) Language acquisition meets language evolution. Cognitive science, 34(7), 1131-57. PMID: 21564247
- June 26, 2011
- 04:50 PM
- 832 views
A random walk model of linguistic complexity
by Sean Roberts in A Replicated Typo 2.0
Large-scale statistical analyses of linguistic typologies (e.g. Lupyan & Dale, 2010) have poor temporal resolution. A correlation between two variables that exists now may be an accident of more complex dynamics. I discuss a random walk model that tries to estimate the probability that a current correlation is dynamically unstable.... Read more »
Lupyan G, & Dale R. (2010) Language structure is partly determined by social structure. PloS one, 5(1). PMID: 20098492
Hay, J., & Bauer, L. (2007) Phoneme inventory size and population size. Language, 83(2), 388-400. DOI: 10.1353/lan.2007.0071
Atkinson QD. (2011) Phonemic diversity supports a serial founder effect model of language expansion from Africa. Science (New York, N.Y.), 332(6027), 346-9. PMID: 21493858
- August 18, 2010
- 01:07 PM
- 828 views
Metroculturalism
by Sean Roberts in A Replicated Typo 2.0
Recent activity in academia and the blogosphere has been encouraging scientists and everyday people to get out of the mono-mindset. Is monolingualism a legitimate abstraction for scientists or is bilingualism a fundamental part of language?... Read more »
Piller, I. (2010) The bilingual edge: why, when, and how to teach your child a second language. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 13(1), 115-118. DOI: 10.1080/13670050802645942
Otsuji, E., & Pennycook, A. (2010) Metrolingualism: fixity, fluidity and language in flux. International Journal of Multilingualism, 7(3), 240-254. DOI: 10.1080/14790710903414331
- January 13, 2011
- 07:49 AM
- 797 views
Dog exhibits mutual exclusivity bias
by Sean Roberts in A Replicated Typo 2.0
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Pilley & Reid (2010) describe an experiment where a border collie was trained to learn proper nouns for objects. After 3 years of training, the dog had learned over 1,000 proper names and showed no sign of slowing. Experiments were run to test whether the dog understood the difference between nouns and commands and whether the . . . → Read More: Dog exhibits mutual exclusivity bias... Read more »
Pilley JW, & Reid AK. (2010) Border collie comprehends object names as verbal referents. Behavioural processes. PMID: 21145379
- August 4, 2011
- 03:42 AM
- 796 views
The Bilingual paradox in Language Evolution: Top down versus bottom up approaches
by Sean Roberts in A Replicated Typo 2.0
Children are adept at learning more than one language at a time and there are many bilingual societies in the world. However, pressures on memory and redundancy makes it unclear what the adaptive advantage of a cognitive capacity for learning multiple languages at an early stage of language evolution would be. How can we account for the evolution of this ability? Would an early population of language users most likely be monolingual or bilingual?... Read more »
David Burkett,, & Tom Griffiths. (2010) Iterated Learning of Multiple Languaged from Multiple Teachers. The Evolution of Language: Proceedings of EvoLang 2010. info:/
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