The evolution of case systems for marking event structure

van Trijp, Remi

doi:10.1075/ais.3.10tri

In:Experiments in Cultural Language Evolution
Edited by Luc Steels
[Advances in Interaction Studies 3] 2012
► pp. 169–205

Get fulltext from our e-platform

Download Book PDF

The evolution of case systems for marking event structure

Remi van Trijp

Published online: 23 February 2012

https://doi.org/10.1075/ais.3.10tri

Case has fascinated linguists for centuries without however revealing its most important secrets. This paper offers operational explanations for case through language game experiments in which autonomous agents describe real-world events to each other. The experiments demonstrate (a) why a language may develop a case system, (b) how a population can self-organize a case system, and (c) why and how an existing case system may take on new functions in a language.

Cited by (7)

Cited by seven other publications

Order by:

Berdicevskis, Aleksandrs, Arturs Semenuks & Vera Kempe

2022. Imperfect language learning reduces morphological overspecification: Experimental evidence. PLOS ONE 17:1 ► pp. e0262876 ff.

Saldana, Carmen, Simon Kirby, Robert Truswell & Kenny Smith

2019. Compositional Hierarchical Structure Evolves through Cultural Transmission: An Experimental Study. Journal of Language Evolution 4:2 ► pp. 83 ff.

Hilpert, Martin

2018. Three open questions in Diachronic Construction Grammar. In Grammaticalization Meets Construction Grammar [Constructional Approaches to Language, 21], ► pp. 21 ff.

Smith, Andrew D. M.

2016. Dynamic Models of Language Evolution: The Linguistic Perspective. In The Palgrave Handbook of Economics and Language, ► pp. 61 ff.

Smith, Andrew D.M.

2014. Models of language evolution and change. WIREs Cognitive Science 5:3 ► pp. 281 ff.

Lestrade, Sander

2015. A case of cultural evolution. Linguistics in the Netherlands 32 ► pp. 105 ff.

Rácz, Péter, Janet B. Pierrehumbert, Jennifer B. Hay & Viktória Papp

2015. Morphological Emergence. In The Handbook of Language Emergence, ► pp. 123 ff.

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 10 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.