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Languages vary widely but not without limit. The central goal of linguistics is to describe the diversity of human languages and explain the constraints on that diversity. Generative linguists following Chomsky have claimed that linguistic diversity must be constrained by innate parameters that are set as a child learns a language (1,2). In contrast, other linguists following Greenberg have claimed that there are statistical tendencies for co-occurrence of traits reflecting universal systems biases (3-5), rather than absolute constraints or parametric variation. Here we use computational phylogenetic methods to address the nature of constraints on linguistic diversity in an evolutionary framework (6). First, contrary to the generative account of parameter setting, we show that the evolution of only a few word-order features of languages are strongly correlated. Second, contrary to the Greenbergian generalizations, we show that most observed functional dependencies between traits are lineage-specific rather than universal tendencies. These findings support the view that--at least with respect to word order--cultural evolution is the primary factor that determines linguistic structure, with the current state of a linguistic system shaping and constraining future states., Human language is unique amongst animal communication systems not only for its structural complexity but also for its diversity at every level of structure and meaning. There are about 7,000 [...]

Our response takes advantage of the wide-ranging commentary to clarify some aspects of our original proposal and augment others. We argue against the generative critics of our coevolutionary program for the language sciences, defend the use of close-to-surface models as minimizing cross-linguistic data distortion, and stress the growing role of stochastic simulations in making generalized historical accounts testable. These methods lead the search for general principles away from idealized representations and towards selective processes. Putting cultural evolution central in understanding language diversity makes learning fundamental in the cognition of language: increasingly powerful models of general learning, paired with channelled caregiver input, seem set to manage language acquisition without recourse to any innate 'universal grammar.' Understanding why human language has no clear parallels in the animal world requires a cross-species perspective: crucial ingredients are vocal learning (for which there are clear non-primate parallels) and an intention-attributing cognitive infrastructure that provides a universal base for language evolution. We conclude by situating linguistic diversity within a broader trend towards understanding human cognition through the study of variation in, for example, human genetics, neurocognition, and psyeholinguistie processing. doi:10.1017/S0140525X09990525

Talk of linguistic universals has given cognitive scientists the impression that languages are all built to a common pattern. In fact, there are vanishingly few universals of language in the direct sense that all languages exhibit them. Instead, diversity can be found at almost every level of linguistic organization. This fundamentally changes the object of enquiry from a cognitive science perspective. This target article summarizes decades of cross-linguistic work by typologists and descriptive linguists, showing just how few and unprofound the universal characteristics of language are, once we honestly confront the diversity offered to us by the world's 6,000 to 8,000 languages. After surveying the various uses of 'universal,' we illustrate the ways languages vary radically in sound, meaning, and syntactic organization, and then we examine in more detail the core grammatical machinery of recursion, constituency, and grammatical relations. Although there are significant recurrent patterns in organization, these are better explained as stable engineering solutions satisfying multiple design constraints, reflecting both cultural-historical factors and the constraints of human cognition. Linguistic diversity then becomes the crucial datum for cognitive science: we are the only species with a communication system that is fundamentally variable at all levels. Recognizing the true extent of structural diversity in human language opens up exciting new research directions for cognitive scientists, offering thousands of different natural experiments given by different languages, with new opportunities for dialogue with biological paradigms concerned with change and diversity, and confronting us with the extraordinary plasticity of the highest human skills. Keywords: Chomsky; coevolution; constituency; culture; dependency; evolutionary theory; Greenberg; linguistic diversity; linguistic typology; recursion; universal grammar doi:10.1017/S0140525X09990999

Informal verbal interaction is the core matrix for human social life. A mechanism for coordinating this basic mode of interaction is a system of turn-taking that regulates who is to speak and when. Yet relatively little is known about how this system varies across cultures. The anthropological literature reports significant cultural differences in the timing of turn-taking in ordinary conversation. We test these claims and show that in fact there are striking universals in the underlying pattern of response latency in conversation. Using a worldwide sample of 10 languages drawn from traditional indigenous communities to major world languages, we show that all of the languages tested provide clear evidence for a general avoidance of overlapping talk and a minimization of silence between conversational turns. In addition, all of the languages show the same factors explaining within-language variation in speed of response. We do, however, find differences across the languages in the average gap between turns, within a range of 250 ms from the cross-language mean. We believe that a natural sensitivity to these tempo differences leads to a subjective perception of dramatic or even fundamental differences as offered in ethnographic reports of conversational style. Our empirical evidence suggests robust human universals in this domain, where local variations are quantitative only, pointing to a single shared infrastructure for language use with likely ethological foundations. cooperation | response speed | social interaction

Today's political and economic environment has focused a spotlight on healthcare reform and the promotion of health information technology in particular. The Obama administration has promised to invest $10 billion [...]

This paper builds on a previous work in which we attempted to retrieve a phylogenetic signal using abstract structural features alone, as opposed to cognate sets, drawn from a sample [...]

Current approaches to human cognition often take a strong nativist stance based on Western adult performance, backed up where possible by neonate and infant research and almost never by comparative research across the Hominidae. Recent research suggests considerable cross-cultural differences in cognitive strategies, including relational thinking, a domain where infant research is impossible because of lack of cognitive maturation. Here, we apply the same paradigm across children and adults of different cultures and across all nonhuman great ape genera. We find that both child and adult spatial cognition systematically varies with language and culture but that, nevertheless, there is a clear inherited bias for one spatial strategy in the great apes. It is reasonable to conclude, we argue, that language and culture mask the native tendencies in our species. This cladistic approach suggests that the correct perspective on human cognition is neither nativist uniformitarian nor 'blank slate' but recognizes the powerful impact that language and culture can have on our shared primate cognitive biases. cognitive evolution | cultural differences | great apes

Yeli Dnye, the language of Rossel Island, Louisiade archipelago, Papua New Guinea, is a non-Austronesian isolate of considerable interest for the prehistory of the area. The kin term, clan, and kinship systems have some superficial similarities with surrounding Austronesian ones, but many underlying differences. The terminology, here properly described for the first time, is highly complex, and seems adapted to a dual descent system, with Crow-type skewing reflecting matrilineal descent, but a system of reciprocals also reflecting the 'unity of the patriline.' It may be analyzed in three mutually consistent ways: as a system of classificatory reciprocals, as a clan-based sociocentric system, and as collapses and skewings across a genealogical net. It makes an interesting contrast to the Trobriand system, and suggests that the alternative types of account offered by Edmund Leach and Floyd Lounsbury for the Trobriand system both have application to the Rossel system. The Rossel system has features (e.g., patrilineal biases, dual descent, collective [dyadic] kin terms, terms for alternating generations) that may be indicative of pre-Austronesian social systems of the area.

The contribution of language history to the study of the early dispersals of modern humans throughout the Old World has been limited by the shallow time depth (about 8000 ± 2000 years) of current linguistic methods. Here it is shown that the application of biological cladistic methods, not to vocabulary (as has been previously tried) but to language structure (sound systems and grammar), may extend the time depths at which language data can be used. The method was tested against well-understood families of Oceanic Austronesian languages, then applied to the Papuan languages of Island Melanesia, a group of hitherto unrelatable isolates. Papuan languages show an archipelago-based phylogenetic signal that is consistent with the current geographical distribution of languages. The most plausible hypothesis to explain this result is the divergence of the Papuan languages from a common ancestral stock, as part of late Pleistocene dispersals., The linguistic comparative method used to construct language family trees relies on recognizing 'cognate sets': words in different languages that are related in meaning and form because they can be [...]

A novel fused hidden Markov model (HMM) is presented for integrating tightly coupled time series, such as audio and visual features of speech. The resulting HMMs are then fused together using a probabilistic fusion model, which is optimal according to the maximum entropy principle and a maximum mutual information criterion.

Attempts are made to verify the possibility by comparing the semantics of spatial adpositions in nine unrelated languages, with the help of standard elicitation procedure, thus producing a preliminary semantic typology of spatial adpositional systems. The language- specific spatial adposition meanings seems to emerge as compact subsets of underlying semantic space, with certain areas being statistical attractors or foci.

Anthropology derives a new field of interest from the research findings within linguistics and psychology, suggesting that spatial language and cognition vary across cultures. The findings raise issues concerning the relation between cultural and linguistic concepts that come under the purview of the general anthropology of space. The new scope has more implications for the study of the concepts of space in practical activities, than for the symbolism of space. The new approach also demands for sophisticated models relating to culture and cognition.

Studies indicate that there is a correlation between the linguistic frame of reference of a population and the cognitive frame of reference within the same domain. Linguistic data was collated for spatial relations over a set of languages with genetic and typological variations. A study was made into how propositions may semantically represent distinctive frames of reference while being functionally equivalent throughout the linguistic communities.

This paper introduces the session on advanced speech recognition technology. The two papers comprising this session argue that current technology yields a performance that is only an order of magnitude in error rate away from human performance and that incremental improvements will bring us to that desired level. I argue that, to the contrary, present performance is far removed from human performance and a revolution in our thinking is required to achieve the goal. It is further asserted that to bring about the revolution more effort should be expended on basic research and less on trying to prematurely commercialize a deficient technology.

Dr. Basch has responded with much of his usual wisdom and insight to the concerns presented in "The perfect storm" [April 3, 2009] about automated and non-compliant documentation in the [...]

Recurrent lexicalization patterns across widely different cultural contexts can provide a window onto common conceptualizations. The cross-linguistic data support the idea that sweet, salt, sour, and bitter are basic tastes. In addition, umami and fatty are likely basic tastes, as well.

This paper introduces the session 'Technology in the Year 2001' and is the first of four papers dealing with the future of human-machine communication by voice. In looking to the future it is important to recognize both the difficulties of technological forecasting and the frailties of the technology as it exists today--frailties that are manifestations of our limited scientific understanding of human cognition. The technology to realize truly advanced applications does not yet exist and cannot be supported by our presently incomplete science of speech. To achieve this long-term goal, the authors advocate a fundamental research program using a cybernetic approach substantially different from more conventional synthetic approaches. In a cybernetic approach, feedback control systems will allow a machine to adapt to a linguistically rich environment using reinforcement learning.

The Global Top 100 ranking in the Nature Publishing Index (www.natureasia.com/en/ publishing-index/global) does an injustice to transnational institutions by not taking into account all contributions when listing their publication output. [...]

The linguistic and cognitive sciences have severely underestimated the degree of linguistic diversity in the world. Part of the reason for this is that we have projected assumptions based on English and familiar languages onto the rest. We focus on some distortions this has introduced, especially in the study of semantics. doi: 10.1017/S0140525X1000018X

Universal Grammar (UG) is indeed evolutionarily implausible. But if languages are just 'adapted' to a large primate brain, it is hard to see why other primates do not have complex languages. The answer is that humans have evolved a specialized and uniquely human cognitive architecture, whose main function is to compute mappings between arbitrary signals and communicative intentions. This underlies the development of language in the human species.

Author(s): Stephen C. Levinson [1] Sir Your News Feature 'Tongue tied' (Nature 438, 148-149; 2005), drawing attention to endangered languages, was very welcome, but in focusing on US research it [...]

A study was conducted to analyze the application of an adaptive deformable mesh for nonrigid tissue motion recovery from ultrasound images. The nodes linking the mesh elements were adaptively allocated to stable speckle patterns that were less susceptible to temporal decorrelation. The finite element analysis method was utilized to manipulate the irregular mesh elements. Results indicated the effectiveness of the algorithm to track nonrigid displacement fields.