4.7 Article

Long-range sequential dependencies precede complex syntactic production in language acquisition

出版社

ROYAL SOC
DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2021.2657

关键词

language acquisition; hierarchy; power law; language evolution

资金

  1. NSF [GRF 2017216247]
  2. Annette Merle-Smith Fellowship
  3. NIMH [T32MH020002]
  4. William Orr Dingwall Dissertation Fellowship
  5. NIH [DC0164081, DC018055]

向作者/读者索取更多资源

Human language relies on hierarchically organized, long-range relationships, which follow a power-law decay. This decay is not exclusive to linguistic structure, as non-linguistic behaviors in other species also demonstrate similar long-range statistical dependencies. In human speech, these statistical dependencies are present at the earliest detectable ages, prior to the production of complex linguistic structure.
To convey meaning, human language relies on hierarchically organized, long-range relationships spanning words, phrases, sentences and discourse. As the distances between elements (e.g. phonemes, characters, words) in human language sequences increase, the strength of the long-range relationships between those elements decays following a power law. This power-law relationship has been attributed variously to long-range sequential organization present in human language syntax, semantics and discourse structure. However, non-linguistic behaviours in numerous phylogenetically distant species, ranging from humpback whale song to fruit fly motility, also demonstrate similar long-range statistical dependencies. Therefore, we hypothesized that long-range statistical dependencies in human speech may occur independently of linguistic structure. To test this hypothesis, we measured long-range dependencies in several speech corpora from children (aged 6 months-12 years). We find that adult-like power-law statistical dependencies are present in human vocalizations at the earliest detectable ages, prior to the production of complex linguistic structure. These linguistic structures cannot, therefore, be the sole cause of long-range statistical dependencies in language.

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