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The Evolution of Case Grammar The evolution of case grammar Remi van Trijp language Computational Models of Language science press Evolution 4 Computational Models of Language Evolution Editors: Luc Steels, Remi van Trijp In this series: 1. Steels, Luc. The Talking Heads Experiment: Origins of words and meanings. 2. Vogt, Paul. How mobile robots can self-organize a vocabulary. 3. Bleys, Joris. Language strategies for the domain of colour. 4. van Trijp, Remi. The evolution of case grammar. 5. Spranger, Michael. The evolution of grounded spatial language. ISSN: 2364-7809 The evolution of case grammar Remi van Trijp language science press Remi van Trijp. 2016. The evolution of case grammar (Computational Models of Language Evolution 4). Berlin: Language Science Press. This title can be downloaded at: http://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/52 © 2016, Remi van Trijp Published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Licence (CC BY 4.0): http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ISBN: 978-3-946234-33-3 (Digital) 978-3-944675-84-8 (Hardcover) 978-3-944675-85-5 (Softcover) 978-1-523743-51-3 (Softcover US) ISSN: 2364-7809 DOI:10.17169/langsci.b52.182 Cover and concept of design: Ulrike Harbort Typesetting: Sebastian Nordhoff, Felix Kopecky, Remi van Trijp Proofreading: Benjamin Brosig, Marijana Janjic, Felix Kopecky Fonts: Linux Libertine, Arimo, DejaVu Sans Mono Typesetting software:Ǝ X LATEX Language Science Press Habelschwerdter Allee 45 14195 Berlin, Germany langsci-press.org Storage and cataloguing done by FU Berlin Language Science Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. To Elise Contents Preface ix 1 Case and artificial language evolution 1 1.1 Introduction ............................. 1 1.2 Case and the grammar square ................... 2 1.2.1 Overview .......................... 2 1.2.2 The functions of case systems ............... 2 1.2.3 Stage I: no marking ..................... 3 1.2.4 Stage II: specific marking ................. 4 1.2.5 Stage III: semantic roles .................. 6 1.2.6 Stage IV: syntactic roles .................. 8 1.2.7 Further developments ................... 9 1.3 Modeling language evolution .................... 10 1.3.1 Overview .......................... 10 1.3.2 Three models of artificial language evolution ...... 10 1.3.3 The do’s and don’ts of artificial language evolution ... 12 1.4 A brief history of prior work .................... 16 1.4.1 Overview .......................... 16 1.4.2 The emergence of adaptive lexicons ............ 17 1.4.3 Towards grammar ..................... 18 1.4.4 Other research avenues .................. 20 2 Processing case and argument structure 23 2.1 Introduction ............................. 23 2.2 Representing and linking meanings ................ 24 2.3 A brief introduction to Fluid Construction Grammar ....... 27 2.3.1 Overview .......................... 27 2.3.2 Unify and Merge ...................... 28 2.3.3 Structure building. ..................... 30 2.4 Parsing ‘Jack sweep dust off-floor’ ................. 32 2.4.1 Overview .......................... 32 Contents 2.4.2 Unifying and merging lexical entries ........... 33 2.4.3 A syntactic case marker .................. 39 2.4.4 The caused motion construction .............. 40 2.5 Producing ‘jack sweep floor’ .................... 43 2.5.1 Overview .......................... 43 2.5.2 Unifying and merging lexical entries ........... 44 2.5.3 The agent-acts-on-surface construction .......... 45 2.6 Networks and conventionalization ................. 47 3 Baseline experiments 49 3.1 Introduction ............................. 49 3.2 Experimental set-up ......................... 49 3.2.1 Overview .......................... 49 3.2.2 Key abilities and self-assessment criteria ......... 50 3.2.3 Description games ..................... 52 3.2.4 The world, sensory-motor input and conceptualization . 54 3.2.5 Additional assumptions and scaffolds ........... 59 3.3 Baseline experiment 1: no marking ................. 62 3.3.1 Overview .......................... 62 3.3.2 An inferential coding system ............... 64 3.3.3 Results and discussion ................... 68 3.4 Baseline experiment 2: specific marking .............. 70 3.4.1 Overview .......................... 70 3.4.2 Speaker-based innovation ................. 70 3.4.3 Results and discussion ................... 79 3.5 Baseline experiment 3: semantic roles ............... 86 3.5.1 Overview .......................... 86 3.5.2 Generalization as a side-effect ............... 86 3.5.3 Results and discussion of set-up 3a ............ 95 3.5.4 Results and discussion of set-up 3b ............ 97 3.5.5 Results and discussion of set-up 3c ............ 101 3.5.6 Results and discussion of set-up 3d ............ 104 3.5.7 Conclusions and future work ............... 107 4 Multi-level selection and language systematicity 111 4.1 Introduction ............................. 111 4.2 Pattern formation .......................... 112 4.2.1 Overview .......................... 112 4.2.2 Pattern formation in language ............... 112 vi Contents 4.2.3 Operationalizing pattern formation ............ 116 4.3 Experiment 1: individual selection without analogy ....... 120 4.3.1 Overview .......................... 120 4.3.2 Experimental set-up .................... 120 4.3.3 Results and discussion ................... 121 4.3.4 The problem of systematicity in other work ....... 127 4.4 Experiment 2: multi-level selection without analogy ....... 132 4.4.1 Overview .......................... 132 4.4.2 Experimental set-up .................... 133 4.4.3 Results and discussion ................... 134 4.5 Experiment 3: multi-level selection with analogy ......... 141 4.5.1 Overview .......................... 141 4.5.2 Experimental set-up .................... 141 4.5.3 Results and discussion ................... 143 4.6 Towards syntactic cases ....................... 152 4.6.1 Overview .......................... 152 4.6.2 A first experiment ..................... 152 4.6.3 The grammar square: a roadmap for further work .... 159 5 Impact on artificial language evolution and linguistic theory 163 5.1 Introduction ............................. 163 5.2 Pushing the state-of-the-art ..................... 164 5.2.1 Overview .......................... 164 5.2.2 Experiment 1: A primitive case system? ......... 164 5.2.3 Experiment 2: dealing with variation ........... 168 5.2.4 Experiment 3: implementing communicative pressures . 171 5.2.5 Experiment 4: more innate knowledge .......... 172 5.2.6 Summary: case markers serve communication ...... 175 5.3 Argument structure and construction grammar ......... 176 5.3.1 Overview .......................... 176 5.3.2 Argument structure in BCG and SBCG .......... 177 5.3.3 An example: the ditransitive construction ........ 178 5.3.4 Discussion and comparison ................ 179 5.4 Analogy, multi-level selection and the constructicon ....... 184 5.4.1 Overview .......................... 184 5.4.2 The organization of the linguistic inventory ....... 185 5.4.3 Construction grammars .................. 186 5.4.4 The inventory in Fluid Construction Grammar ..... 188 vii Contents 5.5 Linguistic typology and grammaticalization ........... 191 5.5.1 Overview .......................... 191 5.5.2 The status of semantic maps ................ 192 5.5.3 Thematic hierarchies in case systems ........... 198 5.5.4 A redundant approach to grammaticalization ...... 200 Postscriptum 207 Artificial language evolution ....................... 208 Acknowledgements ............................ 209 Appendix: Measures 211 References 215 Index 229 Name index ................................. 229 Subject index ................................ 229 viii Preface This book is dedicated to the study of case – an inflectional category system for marking the relations between events and the roles of their participants. How- ever, I have to confess that it wasn’t exactly love at first sight between case mark- ing and me. Or second. I can still recite the complete Latin case paradigm without batting an eyelash because me and my fellow pupils were drilled to do justthat: -us -a -um -i -ae -a. Later, at the age of sixteen, I had an unpleasant encounter with what Mark Twain described as “that awful German language”. One time you had to say den and the other dem without any obvious reason. When I asked the teacher about it, I was literally told to just learn the dialogues in the book by rote and trust him that I was saying the right thing. In the meantime, English and French were stealing my heart because they opened new worlds to me without making a fuss about what seemed to be tiny little details at the time. And yet, here I am presenting a book about the origins and evolution of case systems. You may interpret this as an unhealthy tendency towards masochism, but I am in fact making amends for my early prejudices against case. While work- ing on my doctoral research, it dawned on me that case systems are very elegant solutions to a very complex communicative problem. Case markers turn out to be grammar’s Swiss army knife: they can be used for expressing event structure, spatial and temporal relations, gender and number distinctions, and many other subtle grammatically relevant meanings. I marveled at this unexpected display of functionality and I got intrigued by the rise and fall of case paradigms. The research in this
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