ub.xmlui.mirage2.page-structure.muninLogoub.xmlui.mirage2.page-structure.openResearchArchiveLogo
    • EnglishEnglish
    • norsknorsk
  • Velg spraaknorsk 
    • EnglishEnglish
    • norsknorsk
  • Administrasjon/UB
Vis innførsel 
  •   Hjem
  • Fakultet for humaniora, samfunnsvitenskap og lærerutdanning
  • Institutt for språk og kultur
  • Artikler, rapporter og annet (språk og kultur)
  • Vis innførsel
  •   Hjem
  • Fakultet for humaniora, samfunnsvitenskap og lærerutdanning
  • Institutt for språk og kultur
  • Artikler, rapporter og annet (språk og kultur)
  • Vis innførsel
JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

Universal linguistic hierarchies are not innately wired. Evidence from multiple adjectives

Permanent lenke
https://hdl.handle.net/10037/16423
DOI
https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.7438
Thumbnail
Åpne
article.pdf (354.2Kb)
Publisher's version (PDF)
Dato
2019-08-01
Type
Journal article
Tidsskriftartikkel
Peer reviewed

Forfatter
Leivada, Evelina; Westergaard, Marit
Sammendrag

Background - Linguists and psychologists have explained the remarkable similarities in the orderings of linguistic elements across languages by suggesting that our inborn ability for language makes available certain innately wired primitives. Different types of adjectives, adverbs, and other elements in the functional spine are considered to occupy fixed positions via innate hierarchies that determine orderings such as A>B>C, banning other permutations (*B>C>A). The goal of this research is to tap into the nature and rigidity of such hierarchies by comparing what happens when people process orderings that either comply with them or violate them.

Method - N = 170 neurotypical, adult speakers completed a timed forced choice task that featured stimuli showing a combination of two adjectives and a Spelke-object (e.g., ‘I bought a square black table’). Two types of responses were collected: (i) acceptability judgments on a 3-point Likert scale that featured the options ‘correct’, ‘neither correct nor wrong’, and ‘wrong’ and (ii) reaction times. The task featured three conditions: 1. size adjective > nationality adjective, 2. color adjective > shape adjective, 3. subjective comment adjective > material adjective. Each condition had two orders. In the congruent order, the adjective pair was ordered in agreement with what is traditionally accepted as dictated by the universal hierarchy. In the incongruent order, the ordering was reversed, thus the hierarchy was violated.

Results - In the first experiment, the results of n = 140 monolinguals showed that across conditions, both congruent and incongruent orders were generally accepted as correct. For 2/3 conditions, the difference in acceptability ratings between congruent and incongruent orders did not reach statistical significance. Using time as a window to processing, reaction times showed that incongruent orders do not take longer to process than congruent ones, as should be the case if the former were treated as being licensed under some type of special condition (e.g., contrastive focus) that reverses the unmarked order and legitimizes the violation of the hierarchy. In the second experiment, the results of n = 30 bidialectals, tested in both language varieties, corroborated the findings of the first experiment.

Conclusions - Our findings do not provide evidence for an innate hierarchy for adjective ordering that imposes one rigid, unmarked order. We discuss the importance of notions such as subjectivity and inherentness, and show that for some conditions, not only is there no evidence for a hard constraint that bans incongruent orders, but even simple preferences of congruent orders over incongruent ones are hard to discern. Capturing the bigger picture, given that both the hierarchies and their legit permutations have been described as innate, our results reduce the amount of primitives that are cast as innate, eventually offering a deflationist approach to human linguistic cognition.

Beskrivelse
Source at https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.7438.
Tilknyttede forskningsdata
Leivada, E. & Westergaard, M. (2019). Replication Data for: Universal linguistic hierarchies are not innately wired. https://doi.org/10.18710/NTLLUF. DataverseNO, V1.
Forlag
PeerJ
Sitering
Leivada, E. & Westergaard, M. (2019). Universal linguistic hierarchies are not innately wired. Evidence from multiple adjectives. PeerJ, 7, e7438. https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.7438
Metadata
Vis full innførsel
Samlinger
  • Artikler, rapporter og annet (språk og kultur) [1472]

Bla

Bla i hele MuninEnheter og samlingerForfatterlisteTittelDatoBla i denne samlingenForfatterlisteTittelDato
Logg inn

Statistikk

Antall visninger
UiT

Munin bygger på DSpace

UiT Norges Arktiske Universitet
Universitetsbiblioteket
uit.no/ub - munin@ub.uit.no

Tilgjengelighetserklæring