Wechsler, Stephen M.: Language evolution and LFG: The origins of grammatical relations

In stochastic models of language emergence and use, an interaction between frequency of input data and ongoing exogenous meaning and form biases can lead to the gradual amplification of the effects of those biases until speech production acquires the seemingly obligatory character of following rules of syntactic and semantic composition (this represents ongoing joint work with James Shearer and Katrin Erk). Using such models we can vary initial conditions and study the grammars predicted to emerge. One result is that grammatical relations (GR’s) like subject and object may emerge prior to their linguistic expression through word order, case, or agreement. For example, the subject of a verb is predicted to express the most noteworthy event participant in connection with events of the type expressed by the verb. (When a different argument emerges as the most likely, within a distinguished subset of those events, the result is an argument alternation.) GR’s are also influenced by similarity clustering across the lexicon. Summarizing, GR’s could emerge and categoricalize within complex thought, prior to speech, which is influenced by distinct lexical and information structural factors. This lends support to LFG’s distinction between f- and c-structure.

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April 25, 2022