Syntax Shaped by Cognition:
Transforming theories of syntactic systems through laboratory experiments

Greenberg's Universal 20, as interpreted by Cinque (2005) states that in complex nominal order, Dem-Num-Adj-N (if prenominal modifiers) and N-Adj-Num-Dem or N-Dem-Num-Adj (if postnominal modifiers). In this project we argue that current typological data instead support a preference for homomorphism to an underlying hierarchy in which N and Adj for the closest sub-unit, Num combines with that sub-unit, and Dem combines last (or takes highest scope). Homomorphic orders transparently reflect this hierarchy, i.e., are consistent with this structure, and thus have adjectives closest to nouns and demonstratives farthest away. We explore this bias in artificial language learning experiments across different speaker populations: English, Thai, and Kîîtharaka. The former two represent the most common pre- and post-nominal ordering patterns, both homomorphic. the latter has a post-nominal non-homomorohic order. We find evidence for a bias in favour of homomorphic orders across all three populations.

Martin, A., Adger, D., Abels, K., Kanampiu, P., and Culbertson, J. (2024). A universal cognitive bias in word order: Evidence from speakers whose language goes against it. Psychological science, 35(3):304–311.

Matusevych, Y. and Culbertson, J. (2022). Trees neural those: Rnns can learn the hierarchical structure of noun phrases. In J. Culbertson, A. Perfors, H. Rabagliati, and V. Ramenzoni (eds.), Proceedings of the 44th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Cognitive Science Society.

Martin, A., Holtz, A., Abels, K., Adger, D., and Culbertson, J. (2020). Experimental evidence for the influence of structure and meaning on linear order in the noun phrase. Glossa, 5(1):1–21.

Martin, A., Abels, K., Ratitamkul, T., and Culbertson, J. (2019). Cross-linguistic evidence for cognitive universals in the noun phrase. Linguistics Vanguard, 5(1).

A growing body of research is using silent gesture, in which hearing non-signers use gesture to convey meanings, to investigate the origins of basic word order. In this project, we extend this to nominal order, investigating homomorphism, and also modifier-specific biases in adjective and genitive order. For homomorphism, crucially, we use our findings as a spring board to exploring the conceptual origins of nominal order, positing that differences in mutual information between objects in the world and distinct types of property meanings provide a potential source for a universal representation in this domain. The latter theory is closely connected to domain locality (e.g., Futrell and Levy 2019).

Culbertson, J., Schouwstra, M., and Kirby, S. (2020). From the world to word order: deriving biases in noun phrase order from statistical properties of the world. Language, 96(3).

Holtz, A., Kirby, S., and Culbertson, J. (2022). The influence of category-specific and system-wide preferences on cross-linguistic word order patterns. In J. Culbertson, A. Perfors, H. Rabagliati, and V. Ramenzoni (eds.), Proceedings of the 44th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Cognitive Science Society.

Greenberg's Universal 18 states an implication restriction on nominal modifier order: Adj-N implies Num-N. This statement rules in harmonic orders, in which both adjectives and numerals are placed either before or after the noun. It also rules in a particular non-harmonic order, in which adjectives are post-nominal but numerals are pre-nominal. The first experiments on this pattern, with English-speaking adults, supported the hypothesis that Universal 18 reflected a cognitive bias (Culbertson et al. 2012). However, in subsequent experiments it is clear that the most robust finding is a preference for harmony between the two modifier categories. We have now found this in both adults and children (see also Culbertson and Newport 20215, 2017), and across different speaker populations, including English, French, and Hebrew. The thesis work of Dr. Annie Holtz explores nominal harmony between adjectives and genitives.

Culbertson, J., Franck, J., Braquet, G., Barrera Navarro, M., and Arnon, I. (2020). A learning bias for word order harmony: evidence from speakers of non-harmonic languages. Cognition, 204.

Holtz, A., Kirby, S., and Culbertson, J. (2022). The influence of category-specific and system-wide preferences on cross-linguistic word order patterns. In J. Culbertson, A. Perfors, H. Rabagliati, and V. Ramenzoni (eds.), Proceedings of the 44th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Cognitive Science Society.

A number of Greenbergian universals target cross-category harmony, i.e., alignment in the order of words across different categories of phrases. The most well-known is harmony between verb phrase and adpositional phrase. In this project, we provide evidence for harmony between these two phrase types in artificial language and silent gesture experiments, across English and Chinese speakers. We also explore the origins of this bias, specifically targeting the role of semantic similarity and simplicity. In the former case, we show that a bias for harmony is NOT found between verb phrases and adjectve-modified noun phrases, unless the adjectives are verb-like. In the latter case, we show that harmony holds across domains and modalities, including linguistic, auditory, visual and tactile stimuli.

Hughes, C., Kirby, S., and Culbertson, J. (to appear). Evidence for word order harmony between abstract categories in silent gesture. Cognition.

Wang, F., Kirby, S., and Culbertson, J. (to appear). The learning bias for cross- category harmony is sensitive to semantic similarity: Evidence from artificial language learning experiments. Language.

Culbertson, J., Compostella, A., and Kirby, S. (2024). Language structure reflects biases in pattern learning across domains and modalities. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology.

In this project we investigate the role of meaning in predicting morpheme ordering preferences. Following the hypothesis that complex nominal word order reflects conceptual closeness, we hypothesise that morphemes that most directly impact the meaning of noun stems will be ordered closest to the stem, with others more peripheral. We test this across combinations of morphemes, and across speaker populations, including English, Japanese, Italian, and Kîîtharaka.

Saldana, C., Kanampiu, P., and Culbertson, J. (to appear). Gender comes first: Experimental evidence for the representation of gender closer to the noun stem than number across linguistic populations. Linguistic Inquiry.

Saldana, C., Oseki, Y., and Culbertson, J. (2021). Cross-linguistic patterns of morpheme order reflect cognitive biases: An experimental study of case and number morphology. Journal of Memory and Language, 118:104204.

Maldonado, M., Saldana, C., Culbertson, J.(2020). Learning biases in person-number linearization. PsyArXiv Preprints, University of Zurich.

In this project we aim to re-assess the evidence for a universal suffixing preference by conducting cross-linguistic perceptual similarity judgment experiments (modelled after Hupp et al. 2009). We find clear evidence for an effect of native language on perception comparing speakers of a predominantly suffixing language (English), with speakers of a pre-dominantly prefixing language (Kîîtharaka). The judgments of these two populations diverge dramatically, calling into question the perceptual origins of this typological skew in prevalence. Ongoing work targets speakers of Chinese, a language with minimal affixation.

Martin, A. and Culbertson, J. (2020). Revisiting the suffixing preference: Native language affixation patterns influence perception of sequences. Psychological Science, 31(9):1107–1116.

In this project we use artificial language learning experiments to provide behaviour evidence supporting feature-based theories of person systems. We show that English speaking learners are sensitive to person features that are not present in English, and make generalisation that are feature-based more readily than those which are not. We also explore whether there is behavioral support for a subject-bias, using artificial language experiments targeting Zwicky's generalisation, and by using non-linguistic card sorting tasks across English, Spanish, Vietnamese, Chinese, and Slovenian speakers.

Maldonado, M., Zaslavsky, N., and Culbertson, J. (2023). Evidence for a language-independent conceptual representation of pronominal referents. In M. Goldwater, F.K. Anggoro, B.K. Hayes, and D.C. Ong (eds.), Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, vol. 45.

Maldonado, Mora; Saldana, Carmen; Culbertson, Jennifer (2020). Learning biases in person-number linearization. PsyArXiv Preprints, University of Zurich.

Maldonado, M. and Culbertson, J. (2020). Person of interest: Experimental investigations into the learnability of person systems. Linguistic Inquiry, pp. 1–42.

In this project we apply the Information Bottleneck Framework (Zaslavsky, Kemp, Regier,& Tishby, 2018; Zaslavsky, 2020) to model communicative efficiency in pronominal systems. We find that person systems approach the optimal frontier for efficiency, using a prior on representations that is modelled after the results of our artificial language learning and card-sorting experiments (see above).

Zaslavsky, N., Maldonado, M., and Culbertson, J. (2021). Let’s talk (efficiently) about us: Person systems achieve near-optimal compression. In Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 43. Cognitive Science Society.

In this project we test a proposed link between the morpho-syntax and phonological features of negative words and whether a language has negative concord or double negation, known as the Jespersen-Zeijlstra Generalisation. We find some evidence for a preference for negative concord (in line with previous work on natural language acquisition), however evidence for the hypothesised link only appears within a language, when both strong and weak neg-words are present.

Maldonado, M. and Culbertson, J. (2021). Nobody doesn’t like negative concord. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research.

Recent work suggests that how meanings tend to be mapped to forms cross-linguistically might nevertheless be constrained. Roelofsen & Farkas (2015) suggest that indicating disagreement with a negative question or assertion (e.g., A: ‘Ally doesn’t eat meat.’ B: ‘Yes, he does.’) is more marked than indicating agreement with a positive assertion (e.g., A: ‘Ally eats meat.’ B: ‘Yes, he does’.). This difference in semantic markedness is argued to lead to a difference in form: more marked meanings are mapped to more specialized forms. Here we investigate this hypothesis in a series of behavioral experiments. Across our experiments, we find that participants are indeed sensitive to the differences in meaning that particles can convey. However, not all of the differences implicated by the hierarchy hypothesized in Roelofsen & Farkas (2015) are supported by our results, and we find evidence highlighting an unexpected special role for Positive Agreement—the least marked meaning.

Maldonado, M. and Culbertson, J. (2023). You say yes, I say no: Investigating the link between meaning and form in response particles. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics.

Using artificial language learning experiments, we have shown that adult and child learners use distinct strategies for learning noun classification systems (e.g., grammatical gender): adults relay more on semantic cues to class (e.g., animacy), while children rely more on form-based (phonological) cues (e.g., noun endings). This supports observations from natural language learning, in which children appear to over-rely on phonological cues to class, and suggests a path for how noun classification systems evolve from semantics-based to form-based over time.

Culbertson, J., Jarvinen, H., Haggarty, F., and Smith, K. (2019). Children’s sensitivity to phonological and semantic cues during noun class learning: Evidence for a phonological bias. Language, 95(2):268–293.

Many authors attempt to derive the PCC from purely grammatical considerations which rule out particular combinations of object clitics based on their relative features and the possibility of establishing an agreement relation with the verb (for recent overviews, see Anagnostopoulou 2017, Stegovec 2020, Deal 2021). In contrast, Haspelma (2004) argues that the PCC can bederived from extra-grammatical factors: combinations of the third person indirect object and first person direct object are less frequent thangrammatical configurations, such as the third person direct object and first person indirect object. Haspelmath (2004) proposes that frequent combinations are grammaticalised while the infrequent ones are judged to be worse because they are less frequent. This project aims to develop an artificial language learning paradigm to test this.