Exemplar models, evolution and language change
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Andrew B Wedel
Abstract
Evidence supporting a rich memory for associations suggests that people can store perceptual details in the form of exemplars. The resulting particulate model of category contents allows the application of evolution theory in modeling category change, because variation in categorized percepts is reflected in the distribution of exemplars in a category. Within a production-perception feedback loop, variation within an exemplar-based category provides a reserve of variants that can serve as the seeds for shifts in the system over time through random or selection-driven asymmetries in production and perception. Here, three potential pathways for evolutionary change are identified in linguistic categories: pruning of lines of inheritance, blending inheritance and natural selection. Simulations of each of these pathways are shown within a simple exemplar-based model of category production and perception, showing how consideration of evolutionary processes may contribute to our understanding of linguistic category change over time.
© Walter de Gruyter
Articles in the same Issue
- Introduction to the special issue on exemplar-based models in linguistics
- Statistically gradient generalizations for contrastive phonological features
- Phonological variation in spoken word recognition: Episodes and abstractions
- Exemplar models, evolution and language change
- Exemplar-learning and schematization in a usage-based account of syntactic acquisition
- Exemplar-based syntax: How to get productivity from examples
- Spoken syntax: The phonetics of giving a hand in New Zealand English
- From fush to feesh: Exemplar priming in speech perception
Articles in the same Issue
- Introduction to the special issue on exemplar-based models in linguistics
- Statistically gradient generalizations for contrastive phonological features
- Phonological variation in spoken word recognition: Episodes and abstractions
- Exemplar models, evolution and language change
- Exemplar-learning and schematization in a usage-based account of syntactic acquisition
- Exemplar-based syntax: How to get productivity from examples
- Spoken syntax: The phonetics of giving a hand in New Zealand English
- From fush to feesh: Exemplar priming in speech perception
