Categorical learning plays a foundational role in language development. By reviewing comparative studies on categorical learning in humans and nonhuman animals, we show that categorical learning displays evolutionary continuity across invertebrates and vertebrates. Great apes and parrots can be trained to produce categories of (proto-)language-like symbols in different modalities. From the neurological perspective, we show that as a conserved brain structure, the basal ganglia are involved in categorical learning across species, and language processing in humans. This raises the possibility that categorical learning is one of the crucial cognitive foundations for language evolution.

Categorical Learning and the Cognitive Foundations of Language Evolution and Development

This paper delves into the possible correlations between cognitive impairment due to Alzheimer’s Disease and differences in the ways spatial relations are decoded by groups of individuals with and without AD. We tested participants’ judgments of spatial scenes coded according to intrinsic, relative or undissociated Frames of Reference, ground rotation and use of a locative construction. We found significant differences in the costs of processing spatial information which were considerably higher in elderly and AD groups. On the other hand, judgment ratings reveal that those groups tend to maintain the same Frame of Reference applied by health young individuals to resolve the spatial ambiguity. Furthermore, a general preference for non-relative Frames of Reference was found among participants, all native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese.

Framing Space: Alzheimer’s Disease and Object Location in Brazilian Portuguese

As a prime step in the empirical research cycle, we rely on language to define the constituted concepts. In the plethora of scholarly output, we often find a wide range of discrepant definitions of a given concept manifested by varied linguistic expressions. Capturing the linguistic variability of de facto concept definitions helps researchers assess how convergent our understanding of a concept has become and how falsifiable the associated theory is. To estimate the falsifiability of operational definitions, we proposed and validated proxy measures using natural language processing (NLP) techniques. As a use case study, we quantified the variability of operational definitions of 216 subordinate concepts associated with "open scholarship". We aggregated 2212 operational definitions from online thesauruses and scientific texts and explored the validity of the proposed proxies of definitions' informativeness. Our study brings new perspectives on reappraising the role of language in constructing falsifiable theories.

In search of proxy measures of falsifiability of operational definitions: A cognitive linguistic perspective

The goal of this study was to revisit the nature and role of image schemata in language use. Image schemas have often been thought to be low-level quasi-primitives that structure much of language and thought (Johnson, 1987; Oakley 2010). We queried naive participants’ intuitions about various verbs and their denoted events having visuospatial orientations that can be horizontal, vertical, or some combination or modification of those orientations. The results of our survey show robust consistency among people’s intuitions and suggest that image schemas are dynamic, flexible, and may be combined to compose new ones.

Looking at image schemas: Combinations and modifications

The world’s languages differ in how they order adjectives and nouns relative to each other. We ask whether cross-linguistic variation and systematicity in adjective-noun order can be explained by the iterated pressure for pragmatic referential communication. To this end, we formalize cooperative pressures on referential communication in the Rational Speech Act framework in an iterated learning setting. First, we show that the less informative adjectives are relative to nouns, the more likely they are to occur post-nominally. This is the case when informativeness is manipulated via the composition of the lexical space (i.e., changing the relative number of adjectives vs. nouns that are available for reference), and via the inherent referential utility of adjectives vs. nouns. Secondly, we show that under the assumption that nouns are on average more informative than adjectives, the model predicts a cross-linguistic distribution of ordering preferences that qualitatively resembles the empirical one, with these biases becoming further entrenched with iterated language use. Taken together, these results suggest a possible pathway for syntactic preferences to be calcified over time as the result of pragmatic communicative pressures on language.


The cross-linguistic order of adjectives and nouns may be the result of iterated pragmatic pressures on referential communication

Is “cow” more closely related to “grass” or to “chicken”? Speakers of different languages judge similarity in this context differently, but why? One possibility is that cultures co-varying with these languages induce differences in conceptualizations of similarity. Specifically, East Asian cultures may promote reasoning about thematic similarity, by which cow and grass are more related, whereas Western cultures may bias judgments toward taxonomic relations, like cow and chicken. We measure similarity judgments across the US, China, and Vietnam and replicate US-China differences, but do not find that responding in Vietnam patterns with China. Instead, similarity judgments in Vietnam are intermediate between the US and China. We also show that word embedding models (fastText models for each language) are related to judgments within each country, suggesting a possible alternative interpretation of cross cultural differences. Perhaps notions of similarity are similar across contexts, but the statistics of the linguistic environment vary.


Re-examining cross-cultural similarity judgments using language statistics

Regular polysemes are sets of ambiguous words that all
share the same relationship between their meanings, such
as CHICKEN and LOBSTER both referring to an an-
imal or its meat. To probe how a context embedding
model, here exemplified by BERT, represents regular pol-
ysemy, we analyzed whether its embeddings support an-
swering sense analogy questions similar to “is the map-
ping between CHICKEN (as an animal) to CHICKEN (as
a meat) the same as that which maps between LOBSTER
(as an animal) and LOBSTER (as a meat)?” We found
that (1) the model was sensitive to the shared structure
within a regularity type; (2) the shared structure varies
across regularity types, potentially reflective of a “reg-
ularity continuum;” (3) some high-order latent structure
may be shared across regularity types, suggestive of a
similar latent structure across types; and (4) the is equivo-
cal evidence that the aforementioned effects are explained
by meaning overlap.


Probing the Representational Structure of Regular Polysemy in a Contextual Word Embedding Model via Sense Analogy Questions

We propose a novel process account for how verb metaphors (e.g., The boat waddled) are understood: they are processed as analogical comparisons between the event denoted by the verb and an event schema activated by the noun. We first review evidence that this account is consistent with findings in analogical reasoning and with both literal and metaphoric sentence comprehension. Next, we report the results of an online study of verb metaphor comprehension that supports our claims. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of our findings for theories of metaphor processing and language change over time.

Verb Metaphors are Processed as Analogies

Pragmatics is central to natural language, enabling speakers to communicate efficiently by using structures like ellipsis and anaphora to shorten utterances without loss of meaning. These structures require a listener to interpret an ambiguous form - like a pronoun - and infer the speaker’s intended meaning—who that pronoun refers to. Despite this potential to introduce ambiguity, anaphoric structures are ubiquitous across human language. In an effort to better understand how such structures emerge, we look to see if analogous structures can emerge in languages used between artificial neural networks that are trained to solve a communicative task. We show the following: first, despite the potential for increased ambiguity, languages with anaphoric structure are highly learnable by neural models. Second, anaphoric structure emerges naturally without needing to impose additional constraints on the networks. Finally, we introduce an explicit efficiency pressure on the speaker and show that this increases the prevalence of anaphoric structures. We conclude that certain pragmatic structures straightforwardly emerge between neural networks without explicit pressures, but that the balance between speaker and listener needs conditions the degree and nature of their emergence.

Anaphoric Structure Emerges Between Neural Networks

Words express various sensory information to various degrees. Norming studies have collected native speakers’ subjective perceptual strength ratings for numerous words in several languages. This paper presents perceptual strength norms for 510 Japanese words, including iconic lexemes called ideophones. The newly collected norms replicated some previously reported correlations, such as the one between certain sensory modalities and iconicity. A systematic comparison between the Japanese and English perceptual strength norms further revealed that Japanese onomatopoeic ideophones tend to be more multisensory than their English equivalents and that Japanese words in general tend to encode more interoceptive information than English words. These findings suggest the usefulness of norming data in linguistic typology.

Perceptual Strength Norms for 510 Japanese Words, Including Ideophones: A Comparative Study with English

Learning frequently forces us to rely on the good judgment and epistemic vigilance of sources with no more firsthand knowledge of a topic than ourselves, but who may have more second or third- hand knowledge. Yet, being forced to rely on their judgment doesn’t prevent us from evaluating their judgment: one might trust information because it was passed on to you by someone whose epistemic vigilance you trust, but reject it from someone whom you believe lacks good judgment. We present two experiments suggest that by integrating affective cues like anger and surprise along with perceptual access and consensus, children infer what others believe and what the correct answer to a question is. We discuss implications for consensus-based social learning strategies.

“He only changed his answer because they shouted at him”: children use affective cues to distinguish between genuine and forced consensus

To figure out what happened in the past, we often rely on others’ testimony. One challenge is that people can disagree in their interpretations of what happened. We will investigate children’s use of disagreement as evidence for what happened, specifically, inferring that the event itself was ambiguous and could generate multiple interpretations. Children (N = 50; 7 to 11 years) will hear two observers’ testimony, in which the observers either agreed about another speaker’s desires (e.g., both observers agreed that the speaker wanted an intervention) or disagreed (one observer was sure the speaker wanted the intervention, while the other observer was sure the speaker did not want it). Children will then be asked to infer which of three events happened: the speaker uttered an unambiguous request (should be inferred more in agreement trials), an ambiguous request (should be inferred more in disagreement trials), or a random statement (neither trial type).

Underline digital video library

Categorical Learning and the Cognitive Foundations of Language Evolution and Development

Framing Space: Alzheimer’s Disease and Object Location in Brazilian Portuguese

In search of proxy measures of falsifiability of operational definitions: A cognitive linguistic perspective

Looking at image schemas: Combinations and modifications

The cross-linguistic order of adjectives and nouns may be the result of iterated pragmatic pressures on referential communication

Re-examining cross-cultural similarity judgments using language statistics

Probing the Representational Structure of Regular Polysemy in a Contextual Word Embedding Model via Sense Analogy Questions

Verb Metaphors are Processed as Analogies

Anaphoric Structure Emerges Between Neural Networks

Perceptual Strength Norms for 510 Japanese Words, Including Ideophones: A Comparative Study with English

“He only changed his answer because they shouted at him”: children use affective cues to distinguish between genuine and forced consensus

Inferences from Disagreement

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