Environmental and cultural influences on cross-linguistic variation
In this week’s lecture we covered some evidence that languages evolve as a result of their learning and use, and that these processes can explain some of the fundamental design features of human language, including arbitrariness and compositionality. One corollary of this perspective is that languages whose users are under different production constraints or who have different communicative needs will adapt to those requirements, leading languages to diverge in at least some of their details as they adapt to these different constraints and needs. The readings for this week provide two potential instances of this kind of divergence, where languages existing in different environmental or cultural niches show signs of being adapted to those niches.
You may need to be on the University network to access these papers via the direct links below. The papers are short but technical. Read at least one (but ideally both) and focus on understanding the gist if you feel you are getting bogged down /confused by the technical details - one of the skills you can develop by reading papers is figuring out which points are crucial and need to be understood there and then and identifying where you can press on, figure out what the broader point is, and then decide whether you need to understand the technicalities or can take them on trust. If you can only read one and are not sure which one to read, the Majid et al. paper is more accessible.
In a paper that received quite a lot of attention and generated a bit of controversy at the time, Everett et al. (2015) present evidence that languages spoken in arid climates are less likely to use phonemic tone. The early section on vocal fold physiology is quite technical, focus on extracting the gist here rather than worrying about the details (unless they interest you!). If you need a primer on tone you could look at wikipedia or this excellent encyclopedia entry by Bert Remijsen, who is based here in Edinburgh.
Majid et al. (2018) show that languages differ in the linguist resources they devote to communicating about the different senses - while e.g. English has a far larger conventionalised vocabulary for talking about colour and shape than touch, taste or smell, other languages show a different ranking of linguistic codability of the senses, which the authors attribute to differences in cultural practices in the communities using those languages.
Everett, C., Blasi, D. E., & Roberts, S. G. (2015). Climate, vocal folds, and tonal languages: Connecting the physiological and geographic dots. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, 112, 1322-1327. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1417413112
Majid, A., et al. (2018). Differential coding of perception in the world’s languages. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, 115, 11369-11376. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1720419115
Points to consider in your reading and discussion of Everett et al.:
Points to consider in your reading and discussion of Majid et al.:
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