Semantic Structure in Improvised Communication
Year: 2011
Type: article
Abstract: Recent studies have shown that people, when asked to communicate about simple events in an improvised manner, i.e., using only gesture and no speech, consistently use a sequencing that corresponds with SOV order. We present experimental data showing that SOV is not the only order that emerges, and that intensional events give rise to a different ordering: SVO. We conclude that the semantic properties of the events that are communicated about play a role in the sequencing of utterances in emerging language systems. Further, we hypothesise that in simple language systems the sequencing of elements has a communicative function. We present a second study, which shows that different ordering of the constituents in improvised communication sequences results in different interpretations.
Institution: Utrecht University
Language: English
Subfield: Cultural Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1572374016