Tuesday 27th Jan, 11am-12:30, G32, 7 George Square

Mark Atkinson

Adult language learning and sociocultural determination of linguistic complexity

Languages spoken by larger groups have less complex morphology than those of smaller communities, although it is not immediately clear why this would be the case. One explanation considers the proportion of non-native speakers, which is larger in larger groups. As adults find complex morphology challenging to learn, these languages may be under a greater pressure to simplify.

I’ll describe a recent experiment which investigates these proposed effects of group size and non-native speakers on the transmission of morphological complexity. A set of input data was first created by training participants on a morphologically-complex miniature language over 8 rounds of training and testing. The languages at Round 2, exhibiting morphological simplifications as a result of more limited exposure to the target language, made up a set of “non-native” data. The more complex languages at Round 8 then made up a set of “native” speaker data.

This native and non-native speaker data was then used to construct the inputs for a second group of participants, and so allow us to investigate whether different group types affect how complex a language is acquired. 4 different social conditions were considered: a large group of native speakers, a small group of native speakers, a large group of both native and non-native speakers, and a small group of both native and non-native speakers.

Despite large differences in the input data received by the learners in the different groups, there was no difference in the complexity of the languages they acquired. I’ll discuss the reasons for this (arguably surprising) result, what this means for the hypothesis that adult learning causes morphological simplification, and some possible directions for future research.

• «Previous Post
• Next Post »

---