Competition and Symmetry in an Artificial Word Learning Task

Natural language involves competition. The sentences we choose to utter activate alternative sentences (those we chose not to utter), which hearers typically infer to be false. Hence, as a first approximation, the more alternatives a sentence activates, the more inferences it will trigger. But a clo...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inFrontiers in psychology Vol. 9; p. 2176
Main Authors Buccola, Brian, Dautriche, Isabelle, Chemla, Emmanuel
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Switzerland Frontiers Media 13.11.2018
Frontiers Media S.A
Subjects
alternatives
Cognitive science
competition
pragmatics
psycholinguistics
Psychology
semantics
symmetry
alternatives
competition
semantics
psycholinguistics
symmetry
pragmatics
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary:Natural language involves competition. The sentences we choose to utter activate alternative sentences (those we chose not to utter), which hearers typically infer to be false. Hence, as a first approximation, the more alternatives a sentence activates, the more inferences it will trigger. But a closer look at the theory of competition shows that this is not quite true and that under specific circumstances, so-called alternatives cancel each other out. We present an artificial word learning experiment in which participants learn words that may enter into competition with one another. The results show that a mechanism of competition takes place, and that the subtle prediction that alternatives trigger inferences, and may stop triggering them after a point due to symmetry, is borne out. This study provides a minimal testing paradigm to reveal competition and some of its subtle characteristics in human languages and beyond.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
content type line 23
PMCID: PMC6282061
Edited by: Penka Stateva, University of Nova Gorica, Slovenia
Reviewed by: Chiara Gambi, Cardiff University, United Kingdom; Jacques Moeschler, Université de Genève, Switzerland
These authors have contributed equally to this work
This article was submitted to Language Sciences, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology
ISSN:1664-1078
1664-1078
DOI:10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02176