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Article published In: Interaction and Iconicity in the Evolution of Language:
Edited by Stefan Hartmann, Michael Pleyer, James Winters and Jordan Zlatev
[Interaction Studies 18:3] 2017
► pp. 330–351

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Empirical approaches for investigating the origins of structure in speech

 | Vrije Universiteit Brussel | Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics |
 | Vrije Universiteit Brussel | Aalto University |
 | Vrije Universiteit Brussel |
 | Vrije Universiteit Brussel |
Published online: 8 December 2017
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/is.18.3.03lit
In language evolution research, the use of computational and experimental methods to investigate the emergence of structure in language is exploding. In this review, we look exclusively at work exploring the emergence of structure in speech, on both a categorical level (what drives the emergence of an inventory of individual speech sounds), and a combinatorial level (how these individual speech sounds emerge and are reused as part of larger structures). We show that computational and experimental methods for investigating population-level processes can be effectively used to explore and measure the effects of learning, communication and transmission on the emergence of structure in speech. We also look at work on child language acquisition as a tool for generating and validating hypotheses for the emergence of speech categories. Further, we review the effects of noise, iconicity and production effects.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Emergence of categories in speech
    • 2.1Category emergence at the population level
      • 2.1.1Computational and corpus studies
      • 2.1.2Experimental studies
      • 2.1.3Summary
    • 2.2Category learning in individuals
      • 2.2.1Statistical learning of speech sound categories
      • 2.2.2Effects of speech production of category acquisition
  • 3.The Emergence of combinatorial structure
    • 3.1Effects of learnability in transmission
    • 3.2Effects of physical constraints
    • 3.3Effects of noise
    • 3.4Effects of iconicity and conventionalisation
    • 3.5Measuring structure
    • 3.6Summary
  • 4.Summary and conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
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