Program

TALKS

Invited talk: Marieke Schouwstra (University of Amsterdam)

Understanding word order: why evolution matters

Word order is one of the main strategies languages use to convey who did what to whom, especially when this cannot be inferred from context or world knowledge. Many languages in the world have a dominant word order, and although  all possible orderings of Subject, Object and Verb are attested, some are more frequent than others. Why this is the case, and what processes drive word order is still largely unknown.

I study the emergence of word order conventions by conducting experiments in which participants describe events using only their hands and bodies, but no speech ('silent gesture'). I will demonstrate that silent gesture can uncover ordering preferences that exist independently of the languages participants speak. Further, I will show how word order patterns are shaped by semantic properties that drive variability on the one hand (i.e. different orders for different event types), and a cognitive preference for regularity on the other.

POSTERS
See the list of posters accepted to our workshop.