Matt Spike

the life logistic

---

Project maintained by matspike Hosted on GitHub Pages — Theme by mattgraham

The emergence of linguistic structure in the manual modality

This week we’ll be watching part of an Abralin talk given by the CLE’s very own Simon Kirby. In this talk (which I’d recommend watching all of when you can find the time), Simon gives an overview of three experiments carried out here at the CLE, each of which investigates the role of cultural evolution in the emergence of language in a different way.

We will be watching the middle section of the talk, where Simon talks about the work in Motamedi, Y., Schouwstra, M., Smith, K., Culbertson, J., & Kirby, S. (2019). Evolving artificial sign languages in the lab: From improvised gesture to systematic sign. The excerpt is only about 20 minutes long and Simon is a great speaker, so just sit back and enjoy! Afterwards, note down any questions or observations you have about what you’ve seen, and give some consideration to the following prompts, all for discussion in the tutorial.

Question prompts

• What is the distinction between gestural communication (both in general and as portrayed in the experiments), homesign, and more established sign languages?
• What is meant by the ‘transmission from pantomimic to language-like structure’?
• How are the following terms operationalised in this experiment, how are they measured, and how do they interact with each other?
  • Interaction
  • Transmission
  • Efficiency
  • Systematicity
• Apart from the use of the manual modality, the design of this experiment is very close to many of the previous experiments carried out here at the CLE and elsewhere (e.g. Kirby, S., Tamariz, M., Cornish, H., & Smith, K. (2015). Compression and communication in the cultural evolution of linguistic structure.). Do you think the gestural element of this experiment offers us some unique insights, and if so why?
• Do you think this experiment provides support for a gesture-first account of language evolution?
• Can you think of any ways in which you would like to extend or modify this experiment, or does it give you any other research ideas?

References

Motamedi, Y., Schouwstra, M., Smith, K., Culbertson, J., & Kirby, S. (2019). Evolving artificial sign languages in the lab: From improvised gesture to systematic sign. Cognition, 192, 103964.

Kirby, S., Tamariz, M., Cornish, H., & Smith, K. (2015). Compression and communication in the cultural evolution of linguistic structure. Cognition, 141, 87-102.