Papers by Peeter Tinits
This article investigates the influence of contextual pressures on the evolution of overspecifica... more This article investigates the influence of contextual pressures on the evolution of overspecification, i.e. the degree to which communicatively irrelevant meaning dimensions are specified, in an iterated learning setup. To this end, we combine two lines of research: In artificial language learning studies, it has been shown that (miniature) languages adapt to their contexts of use. In experimental pragmatics, it has been shown that referential overspecification in natural language is more likely to occur in contexts in which the communicatively relevant feature dimensions are harder to discern. We test whether similar functional pressures can promote the cumulative growth of referential overspecifica-tion in iterated artificial language learning. Participants were trained on an artificial language which they then used to refer to objects. The output of each participant was used as input for the next participant. The initial language was designed such that it did not show any overspecification, but it allowed for overspecification to emerge in 16 out of 32 usage contexts. Between conditions, we manipulated the referential context in which the target items appear, so that the relative visuospatial complexity of the scene would make the communicatively relevant feature dimensions more difficult to discern in one of them. The artificial languages became overspecified more quickly and to a significantly higher degree in this condition, indicating that the trend toward overspecification was stronger in these contexts , as suggested by experimental pragmatics research. These results add further support to the hypothesis that linguistic conventions can be partly determined by usage context and shows that experimental pragmatics can be fruitfully combined with artificial language learning to offer valuable insights into the mechanisms involved in the evolution of linguistic phenomena.
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Sign Systems Studies, 2014
Review of Meaning in Communication, Cognition, and Reality: Outline of a Theory from Semiotics, P... more Review of Meaning in Communication, Cognition, and Reality: Outline of a Theory from Semiotics, Philosophy, and Sociology, by Martin Staude. Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2012.
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Behavioural experiments with miniature artificial languages have provided a promising toolkit for... more Behavioural experiments with miniature artificial languages have provided a promising toolkit for typological research in linguistics. In contrast to the progress made on the role of
individual learning in typological tendencies, so far the role of the dynamics in a communicative situation have been little explored. The current contribution combines paradigms from artificial language learning with ones from experimental pragmatics and experimental semiotics in order to develop an experimental framework that would allow biases in communication to be considered in the specific context of language typology. The study implemented in this paradigm addresses the hypothesis by which widespread morphological simplification has been related to particular social structures and hence the presence of certain kinds of interactions in the community. The study focusses on the impact of morphological complexity on the linguistic outcome of certain types of collaborative interactions in a situation of language contact with two very similar varieties and no prior history of bilingualism. Contrasting the morphological complexity of minority languages in small groups of three individuals, a trend is found for greater stability for the minority language when it is morphologically simpler than the majority. As groups with a minority language that is simpler than the majority establish communication by developing mutual understanding of the two varieties, groups with a minority that is equally complex refrain from using the minority very quickly into the interactions. The tendency for the groups with a simpler minority to be slower to establish communication indicates that this trend is due to some motivations of the minority speaker that are present in these interactions. The sample size in this study is however too small for any strong conclusions to be made and future contributions are invited to extend it. As a main aim of the contribution, the feasibility of the paradigm is investigated on various parameters and found to provide a solid platform for future studies.
Keywords: morphological complexity, morphological simplification, experimental linguistics, artifical language learning, experimental semiotics
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Abstracts by Peeter Tinits
Short description: Overspecification makes languages more complex - but given contextual pressure... more Short description: Overspecification makes languages more complex - but given contextual pressures, complex structures can sometimes be the simpler solution.
Citation:
Hartmann S., Tinits P., Nölle J., Hartmann T. and Pleyer M. (2016). Plain Simple Complex Structures: The Emergence Of Overspecification In An Iterated Learning Setup. In S.G. Roberts, C. Cuskley, L. McCrohon, L. Barceló-Coblijn, O. Feher & T. Verhoef (eds.) The Evolution of Language: Proceedings of the 11th International Conference (EVOLANG11). Available online: http://evolang.org/neworleans/papers/144.html
Supplementary material available under http://evolang.org/neworleans/papers/144.html
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Dissertations by Peeter Tinits
Introduction: The object of this dissertation is metapragmatic discourse in the context of langua... more Introduction: The object of this dissertation is metapragmatic discourse in the context of language standardization. Particularly we will investigate how the members of the Estonian language community reflexively participated in the process of language standardization during the language debates in the early 20th century. We will focus on three topics that have found mention in the sociolinguistic literature on standardization: enregisterment, standard language culture, and linguistic marketplace, and analyse their discursive representation within the language debates. The main objective of this dissertation is to contribute to an understanding of language standardization as a reflexive and ideologically mediated process and present its salient aspects in the Estonian case.
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The dissertation reports on a series of experiments that were conducted to establish a novel para... more The dissertation reports on a series of experiments that were conducted to establish a novel paradigm for investigating proximal mechanisms of diffusion in language simplification. The paradigm implements a semiotic matching task with learned miniature languages in a closed group in order to investigate how such language simplification would fare in the presence of an established community speaking a moderately complex language. For this, composite populations were made of three subjects, with one subject receiving a different training than the other two, representing minority and majority varieties respectively. Exploratory analyses on several pilot studies are reported and their implications for the experimental setup explained. The main experiment contrasts two minority varieties (one simple, one complex) in the presence of a majority complex variety, in order to test the hypothesis that a simple variety would prove more stable in such contact situations. The results indicate that the simple variety exhibited less change when comparing the languages on training with the final round of play (one-tailed t-test p < 0.01). Interestingly, this stability was not accompanied by a quicker success in establishing communication, in fact, the groups with a simple variety did worse. The findings warrants further studies into such communicative situations with a larger sample sizes, and the main aim of the dissertation is to provide a platform to begin from.
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Papers by Peeter Tinits
individual learning in typological tendencies, so far the role of the dynamics in a communicative situation have been little explored. The current contribution combines paradigms from artificial language learning with ones from experimental pragmatics and experimental semiotics in order to develop an experimental framework that would allow biases in communication to be considered in the specific context of language typology. The study implemented in this paradigm addresses the hypothesis by which widespread morphological simplification has been related to particular social structures and hence the presence of certain kinds of interactions in the community. The study focusses on the impact of morphological complexity on the linguistic outcome of certain types of collaborative interactions in a situation of language contact with two very similar varieties and no prior history of bilingualism. Contrasting the morphological complexity of minority languages in small groups of three individuals, a trend is found for greater stability for the minority language when it is morphologically simpler than the majority. As groups with a minority language that is simpler than the majority establish communication by developing mutual understanding of the two varieties, groups with a minority that is equally complex refrain from using the minority very quickly into the interactions. The tendency for the groups with a simpler minority to be slower to establish communication indicates that this trend is due to some motivations of the minority speaker that are present in these interactions. The sample size in this study is however too small for any strong conclusions to be made and future contributions are invited to extend it. As a main aim of the contribution, the feasibility of the paradigm is investigated on various parameters and found to provide a solid platform for future studies.
Keywords: morphological complexity, morphological simplification, experimental linguistics, artifical language learning, experimental semiotics
Abstracts by Peeter Tinits
Citation:
Hartmann S., Tinits P., Nölle J., Hartmann T. and Pleyer M. (2016). Plain Simple Complex Structures: The Emergence Of Overspecification In An Iterated Learning Setup. In S.G. Roberts, C. Cuskley, L. McCrohon, L. Barceló-Coblijn, O. Feher & T. Verhoef (eds.) The Evolution of Language: Proceedings of the 11th International Conference (EVOLANG11). Available online: http://evolang.org/neworleans/papers/144.html
Supplementary material available under http://evolang.org/neworleans/papers/144.html
Dissertations by Peeter Tinits
individual learning in typological tendencies, so far the role of the dynamics in a communicative situation have been little explored. The current contribution combines paradigms from artificial language learning with ones from experimental pragmatics and experimental semiotics in order to develop an experimental framework that would allow biases in communication to be considered in the specific context of language typology. The study implemented in this paradigm addresses the hypothesis by which widespread morphological simplification has been related to particular social structures and hence the presence of certain kinds of interactions in the community. The study focusses on the impact of morphological complexity on the linguistic outcome of certain types of collaborative interactions in a situation of language contact with two very similar varieties and no prior history of bilingualism. Contrasting the morphological complexity of minority languages in small groups of three individuals, a trend is found for greater stability for the minority language when it is morphologically simpler than the majority. As groups with a minority language that is simpler than the majority establish communication by developing mutual understanding of the two varieties, groups with a minority that is equally complex refrain from using the minority very quickly into the interactions. The tendency for the groups with a simpler minority to be slower to establish communication indicates that this trend is due to some motivations of the minority speaker that are present in these interactions. The sample size in this study is however too small for any strong conclusions to be made and future contributions are invited to extend it. As a main aim of the contribution, the feasibility of the paradigm is investigated on various parameters and found to provide a solid platform for future studies.
Keywords: morphological complexity, morphological simplification, experimental linguistics, artifical language learning, experimental semiotics
Citation:
Hartmann S., Tinits P., Nölle J., Hartmann T. and Pleyer M. (2016). Plain Simple Complex Structures: The Emergence Of Overspecification In An Iterated Learning Setup. In S.G. Roberts, C. Cuskley, L. McCrohon, L. Barceló-Coblijn, O. Feher & T. Verhoef (eds.) The Evolution of Language: Proceedings of the 11th International Conference (EVOLANG11). Available online: http://evolang.org/neworleans/papers/144.html
Supplementary material available under http://evolang.org/neworleans/papers/144.html