Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-29T03:36:40.409Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

On the replicator dynamics of lexical stress: accounting for stress-pattern diversity in terms of evolutionary game theory*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 December 2017

Andreas Baumann  and
Nikolaus Ritt
Andreas Baumann*
Affiliation:
University of Vienna
Nikolaus Ritt*
Affiliation:
University of Vienna
*
E-mail: [email protected], [email protected].
E-mail: [email protected], [email protected].
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper accounts for stress-pattern diversity in languages such as English, where words that are otherwise equivalent in terms of phonotactic structure and morphosyntactic category can take both initial and final stress, as seen in ˈlentil – hoˈtel, ˈenvoy – deˈgree, ˈresearchN – reˈsearchN and ˈaccessV – acˈcessV. Addressing the problem in general and abstract terms, we identify systematic conditions under which stress-pattern diversity becomes stable. We hypothesise that words adopt stress patterns that produce, on average, the best possible phrase-level rhythm. We model this hypothesis in evolutionary game theory, predict that stress-pattern diversity among polysyllabic word forms depends on the frequency of monosyllables and demonstrate how that prediction is met both in Present-Day English and in its history.

Type
Articles
Information
Phonology , Volume 34 , Issue 3 , December 2017 , pp. 439 - 471
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

For constructive comments on earlier versions of this paper we owe thanks to Donka Minkova, Elan Dresher, Heinz Giegerich, Kenny Smith and Simon Kirby, three anonymous reviewers and the editors of Phonology. Obviously, any remaining errors are ours.

The appendices mentioned in the paper are available as online supplementary materials at https://doi.org/10.1017/S0952675717000240.

References

REFERENCES

Altmann, Eduardo G., Pierrehumbert, Janet B. & Motter, Adilson E. (2009). Beyond word frequency: bursts, lulls, and scaling in the temporal distributions of words. PLoS ONE 4. Available at https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0007678.Google Scholar
Anderson, John M. (1986). Suprasegmental dependencies. In Durand, Jacques (ed.) Dependency and non-linear phonology. London: Croom Helm. 55–133.Google Scholar
Attridge, Derek (1982). The rhythms of English poetry. London & New York: Longman.Google Scholar
Baayen, R. Harold, Piepenbrock, Richard & Gulikers, Leon (1995). The CELEX lexical database. Philadelphia: Linguistic Data Consortium. https://catalog.ldc.upenn.edu/ldc96l14.Google Scholar
Baxter, Gareth J., Blythe, Richard A., Croft, William & McKane, Alan J. (2009). Modeling language change: an evaluation of Trudgill's theory of the emergence of New Zealand English. Language Variation and Change 21. 257–296.Google Scholar
Blevins, Juliette (2004). Evolutionary Phonology: the emergence of sound patterns. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Boer, Bart de (2000). Self-organization in vowel systems. JPh 28. 441–465.Google Scholar
Boer, Bart de (2002). Evolving sound systems. In Cangelosi, Angelo & Parisi, Dominic (eds.) Simulating the evolution of language. London: Springer. 79–97.Google Scholar
Brighton, Henry, Smith, Kenny & Kirby, Simon (2005). Language as an evolutionary system. Physics of Life Reviews 2. 177–226.Google Scholar
Burzio, Luigi (1994). Principles of English stress. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bybee, Joan (2001). Phonology and language use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bybee, Joan (2007). Frequency of use and the organization of language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bybee, Joan, Chakraborti, Paromita, Jung, Dagmar & Scheibman, Joanne (1998). Prosody and segmental effect: some paths of evolution for word stress. Studies in Language 22. 267–314.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chomsky, Noam & Halle, Morris (1968). The sound pattern of English. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
Christiansen, Morten H. & Chater, Nick (2008a). Language as shaped by the brain. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 31. 489–509.Google Scholar
Christiansen, Morten H. & Chater, Nick (2008b). Brains, genes, and language evolution: a new synthesis. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 31. 537–558.Google Scholar
Croft, William (2000). Explaining language change: an evolutionary approach. Harlow: Longman.Google Scholar
Dawkins, Richard (1976). The selfish gene. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Dennett, Daniel C. (1987). The intentional stance. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Domahs, Ulrike, Plag, Ingo & Carroll, Rebecca (2014). Word stress assignment in German, English and Dutch: quantity-sensitivity and extrametricality revisited. Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 17. 59–96.Google Scholar
Donegan, Patricia J. & Stampe, David (1979). The study of natural phonology. In Dinnsen, Daniel A. (ed.) Current approaches to phonological theory. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 126–173.Google Scholar
Donegan, Patricia J. & Stampe, David (1983). Rhythm and the holistic organization of language structure. In Richardson, John F., Marks, Mitchell & Chukerman, Amy (eds.) Papers from the parasession on the interplay of phonology, morphology, and syntax. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society. 337–353.Google Scholar
Donegan, Patricia J. & Stampe, David (2009). Hypotheses of Natural Phonology. Poznań Studies in Contemporary Linguistics 45. 1–31.Google Scholar
Dresher, B. Elan & Lahiri, Aditi (2005). Main stress left in Early Middle English. In Fortescue, Michael, Jensen, Eva Skafte, Mogensen, Jens Erik & Schøsler, Lene (eds.) Historical linguistics 2003: selected papers from the 16th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Copenhagen, 11–15 August 2003. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: Benjamins. 75–85.Google Scholar
Dresher, B. Elan & Lahiri, Aditi (2015). Romance loanwords and stress shift in English: a quantitative approach. Paper presented at the 2nd Edinburgh Symposium on Historical Phonology, University of Edinburgh. Available (August 2017) at http://homes.chass.utoronto.ca/~dresher/talks/Dresher-Lahiri-ESohPh_talk_pub.pdf.Google Scholar
Dressler, Wolfgang U. (1985). Morphonology: the dynamics of derivation. Ann Arbor: Karoma.Google Scholar
Dziubalska-Kołaczyk, Katarzyna (2009). NP extension: B&B phonotactics. Poznań Studies in Contemporary Linguistics 45. 55–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fitch, W. Tecumseh (2013). Rhythmic cognition in humans and animals: distinguishing meter and pulse perception. Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience 7:68. 1–16.Google Scholar
Fullwood, Michelle A. (2014). Asymmetric correlations between English verb transitivity and stress. BLS 40. 125–138.Google Scholar
Giegerich, Heinz J. (1985). Metrical phonology and phonological structure: German and English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Halle, Morris (1998). The stress of English words 1968–1998. LI 29. 539–568.Google Scholar
Hay, Jessica S. F. & Diehl, Randy L. (2007). Perception of rhythmic grouping: testing the iambic/trochaic law. Perception and Psychophysics 69. 113–122.Google Scholar
Hayes, Bruce (1982). Extrametricality and English stress. LI 13. 227–276.Google Scholar
Hayes, Bruce (1984). The phonology of rhythm in English. LI 15. 33–74.Google Scholar
Hofbauer, Josef & Sigmund, Karl (1998). Evolutionary games and population dynamics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hutton, John (1998). Stress in Old English, giet ongean . Linguistics 36. 847–885.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hyde, Brett (2007). Non-finality and weight-sensitivity. Phonology 24. 287–334.Google Scholar
Hyde, Brett (2011). Extrametricality and non-finality. In van Oostendorp, Marc, Ewen, Colin J., Hume, Elizabeth & Rice, Keren (eds.) The Blackwell companion to phonology. Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell. 1027–1051.Google Scholar
Jäger, Gerhard (2008). Applications of game theory in linguistics. Language and Linguistics Compass 2. 406–421.Google Scholar
Jäger, Gerhard & Rosenbach, Anette (2008). Priming and unidirectional language change. Theoretical Linguistics 34:2. 85–113.Google Scholar
Jespersen, Otto (1912). Growth and structure of the English language. 2nd edn. Leipzig: Teubner.Google Scholar
Jespersen, Otto (1928). Monosyllabism in English. Proceedings of the British Academy 14. 341–368.Google Scholar
Kager, René (1989). A metrical theory of stress and destressing in English and Dutch. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar
Kager, René (2005). The factorial typology of rhythmic licensing constraints. Phonological Studies 5. 147–155.Google Scholar
Kelly, Michael H. (1988). Rhythmic alternation and lexical stress differences in English. Cognition 30. 107–137.Google Scholar
Kelly, Michael H. (1989). Rhythm and language change in English. Journal of Memory and Language 28. 690–710.Google Scholar
Kiparsky, Paul (1966). Über den deutschen Akzent. Studia Grammatica 7. 69–98.Google Scholar
Kiparsky, Paul (1979). Metrical structure assignment is cyclic. LI 10. 421–441.Google Scholar
Lass, Roger (1992). Phonology and morphology. In Blake, Norman (ed.) The Cambridge history of the English language. Vol. 2: 1066–1476. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 23–155.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lass, Roger (1997). Historical linguistics and language change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, Ming-Wei & Gibbons, Julie (2007). Rhythmic alternation and the optional complementiser in English: new evidence of phonological influence on grammatical encoding. Cognition 105. 446–456.Google Scholar
Liberman, Mark & Prince, Alan (1977). On stress and linguistic rhythm. LI 8. 249–336.Google Scholar
Maynard Smith, J. & Price, G. R. (1973). The logic of animal conflict. Nature 246. 15–18.Google Scholar
McCrohon, Luke (2012). The two-stage life cycle of cultural replicators. Theoria et Historia Scientiarum 9. 149–170.Google Scholar
McMahon, April M. S. & McMahon, Robert (2013). Evolutionary linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Minkova, Donka (1997). Constraint ranking in Middle English stress-shifting. English Language and Linguistics 1. 135–175.Google Scholar
Mitchener, W. Garrett (2003). Bifurcation analysis of the fully symmetric language dynamical equation. Journal of Mathematical Biology 46. 265–285.Google Scholar
Mitchener, W. Garrett & Nowak, Martin A. (2004). Chaos and language. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B 271. 701–704.Google Scholar
Mühlenbernd, Roland & Wahle, Johannes (2016). Self-organization in sound systems: a model of sound strings processing agents. In Roberts, Séan, Cuskley, Christine, McCrohon, Luke, Barceló-Coblijn, Lluís, Feher, Olga & Verhoef, Tessa (eds.) Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on the Evolution of Language. Available (August 2017) at http://evolang.org/neworleans/papers/42.html.Google Scholar
Niyogi, Partha (2006). The computational nature of language learning and evolution. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Nowak, Martin A. (2000). The basic reproductive ratio of a word, the maximum size of a lexicon. Journal of Theoretical Biology 204. 179–189.Google Scholar
Nowak, Martin A. (2006). Evolutionary dynamics: exploring the equations of life. Cambridge, Mass. & London: Belknap.Google Scholar
Nowak, Martin A. & Komarova, Natalia L. (2001). Towards an evolutionary theory of language. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 5. 288–295.Google Scholar
Nowak, Martin A., Komarova, Natalia L. & Niyogi, Partha (2002). Computational and evolutionary aspects of language. Nature 417. 611–617.Google Scholar
Nowak, Martin A., Plotkin, Joshua B. & Jansen, Vincent A. A. (2000). The evolution of syntactic communication. Nature 404. 495–498.Google Scholar
Oostendorp, Marc van (2005). Stress and metrical structure. Available (August 2017) at http://www.vanoostendorp.nl/pdf/051115.pdf.Google Scholar
Paul, Hermann (1920). Prinzipien der Sprachgeschichte. 5th edn. Halle: Niemeyer.Google Scholar
Pierrehumbert, Janet B. (2001). Exemplar dynamics: word frequency, lenition and contrast. In Bybee, Joan & Hopper, Paul (eds.) Frequency and the emergence of linguistic structure. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: Benjamins. 137–157.Google Scholar
Pierrehumbert, Janet B. (2012). The dynamic lexicon. In Cohn, Abigail C., Fougeron, Cécile & Huffman, Marie K. (eds.) The Oxford handbook of laboratory phonology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 173–183.Google Scholar
Ritt, Nikolaus (2004). Selfish sounds and linguistic evolution: a Darwinian approach to language change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ritt, Nikolaus (2012). Middle English phonology in the digital age: what written corpora can tell us about sound change. In Nevalainen, Terttu & Traugott, Elizabeth Closs (eds.) The Oxford handbook of the history of English. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 81–86.Google Scholar
Ross, Don (2016). Game theory. In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.) Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy archive (Winter 2016 edition). https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/game-theory.Google Scholar
Schane, Sanford (2007). Understanding English word accentuation. Language Sciences 29. 372–384.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schlüter, Julia (2005). Rhythmic grammar: the influence of rhythm on grammatical variation and change in English. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Sherman, Donald (1975). Noun-verb stress alternation: an example of the lexical diffusion of sound change in English. Linguistics 13. 43–72.Google Scholar
Smith, John Maynard (1982). Evolution and the theory of games. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Kenny & Kirby, Simon (2008). Cultural evolution: implications for understanding the human language faculty and its evolution. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. B 363. 3591–3603.Google Scholar
Solé, Ricard V. (2011). Phase transitions. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Sonderegger, Morgan & Niyogi, Partha (2010). Combining data and mathematical models of language change. In Proceedings of the 48th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics. Association for Computational Linguistics. 1019–1029.Google Scholar
Sonderegger, Morgan & Niyogi, Partha (2013). Variation and change in English noun/verb pair stress: data and dynamical systems models. In Yu, Alan C. L. (ed.) Origins of sound change: approaches to phonologization. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 262–284.Google Scholar
Stampe, David (1979). A dissertation on Natural Phonology. New York: Garland.Google Scholar
Tallerman, Maggie & Gibson, Kathleen R. (eds.) (2012). The Oxford handbook of language evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Vennemann, Theo (1986). Neuere Entwicklungen in der Phonologie. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Wang, William S.-Y., Ke, Jinyun & Minett, James W. (2004). Computational studies of language evolution. In Huang, Chu-Ren & Lenders, Winfried (eds.) Computational linguistics and beyond. Taiwan: Academia Sinica. 65–108.Google Scholar
Wedel, Andrew (2006). Exemplar models, evolution and language change. The Linguistic Review 23. 247–274.Google Scholar
Wedel, Andrew (2009). Resolving pattern conflict: variation and selection in phonology and morphology. In Blevins, James P. & Blevins, Juliette (eds.) Analogy in grammar: form and acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 83–100.Google Scholar
Wolfram Research, Inc. (2016). Mathematica. Version 11.0. Software package. Champaign, Ill. http://www.wolfram.com/support.Google Scholar
Yang, Charles D. (2000). Internal and external forces in language change. Language Variation and Change 12. 231–250.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: PDF

Baumann and Ritt supplementary material

Appendices A-B

Download Baumann and Ritt supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 219.3 KB