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Abstract

This paper presents a model of the origins of syllable systems that brings plausibility to the theory which claims that language learning, and in particular phonological acquisition, needs not innate linguistically specific information, as believed by many researchers of the Chomskyan school, but is rather made possible by the interaction between general motor, perceptual, cognitive and social constraints through a self-organizing process. The strategy is to replace the question of acquisition in a larger and evolutionary (cultural) framework: the model addresses the question of the origins of syllable systems (syllables are the major phonological units in speech). It is based on the artificial life methodology of building a society of agents, endowed with motor, perceptual and cognitive apparati that are generic and realistic. We show that agents effectively build sound systems and how these sound systems relate to existing human sound systems. Results concerning the learnability of the produced sound systems by fresh/baby agents are detailed: the critical period effect and the artificial language effect can effectively be predicted by our model. The ability of children to learn sound systems is explained by the evolutionary history of these sound systems, which were precisely shaped so as to fit the ecological niche formed by the brains and bodies of these children, and not the other way around (as advocated by Chomskyan approaches to language).

@inproceedings{oudeyerea2001,
  author={P-Y. Oudeyer},
  title={Origins and Learnability of Syllable Systems: a Cultural Evolutionary Model},
  year={2001},
  pages={143-155},
  editor={Collet P. and Fonlupt C. and Hao J.K., Lutton E. and Schoenauer M.},
  publisher={Springer Verlag},
  booktitle={Artificial Evolution, LNCS 2310},
  url={http://www.isrl.uiuc.edu/~amag/langev/paper/oudeyerea2001.html}
}

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