Adjective position and referential efficiency in American Sign Language: Effects of adjective semantics, sign type and age of sign exposure

Rubio-Fernández, Paula; Wienholz, Anne; Ballard, Carey M.; Kirby, Simon; Lieberman, Amy M.

doi:10.1016/j.jml.2022.104348

Cited by 4 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…Specifically, the idea that adjectives, like the objects in intensional events, depend on the head for their interpretation. The possibility that adjectives might tend to be postnominal for this reason is explicitly discussed by Culbertson et al ((2012)), and supported by the results of several experiments (Culbertson, Schouwstra, & Kirby, 2020;Jaffan et al, 2020;Rubio-Fernandez, Wienholz, Ballard, Kirby, & Lieberman, 2022;Weisleder & Fernald, 2009). Specifically, many common adjectives depend on the context of the noun in order for their meaning to be correctly interpreted.…”

Section: Why These Category-specific Biases?mentioning

confidence: 88%

With or without a system: How category-specific and system-wide cognitive biases shape word order

Holtz¹,

Kirby²,

Culbertson³

2023

Preprint

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There are certain recurrent features of language that characterise the way whole language systems are structured, and others that target specific categories of items within those wider systems. For example, languages tend to exhibit harmonic (i.e. consistent) ordering between heads and dependents, making it a kind of system-wide regularity. While this tendency is generally robust, some categories of linguistic items deviate from this trend. We examine one such case of non-harmony, namely the order of the noun with respect to two dependents -- adjectives and genitives. Using two silent gesture experiments, this study tests the hypothesis that category-specific cognitive biases favour postnominal adjective order and prenominal genitive order. Further, we show that the influence of these biases is revealed in contexts where no conventionalised system is in place. When a system is in place, participants learn that system, and category-specific biases do not impact their learning. Our results suggest that different types of linguistic contexts reveal the influence of separate types of cognitive biases, such that some are active during learning and others are active during language creation.

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