Abstract English (an SVO language) and Korean SOV are polar opposites in terms of grammatical order. Studies show that rhetorical devices (RDs) effective generating collective audience responses British political oratory. This article attempts to study the functions RDs oratory importance speech delivery. Through analysis speaker-audience turn-taking systems, it is suggested do not function as ...

It is a reasonable assumption that universal properties of natural languages are not accidental. They occur either because they are underwritten by genetic code, because they assist in language processing or language learning, or due to some combination of the two. In this paper we investigate one such language universal – the suffixing preference across the world's languages, whereby inflectio...

This study is to examine if typological universals built upon primary languages are applicable to interlanguage data in SLA. Implicational universal is considered the classic example of a typological universal by Croft (2003). Thus, the Interlanguage Structural Conformity Hypothesis, which consists of two implicational universals proposed by Eckman (1991), were tested against data from an inter...

Starting from language origins theories, which connect prelinguistic primate abilities such as deixis, to modern linguistic systems, we seek to let emerge universals of human languages such as dispersion principles and the quantal aspect of speech. For this aim, we model a society of Bayesian sensory-motor agents, which interact and evolve in an environment filled with objects they can identify...

Starting from language origins theories, which connect prelinguistic primate abilities such as deixis, to modern linguistic systems, we seek to let emerge universals of human languages such as dispersion principles and the quantal aspect of speech. For this aim, we model a society of Bayesian sensory-motor agents, which interact and evolve in an environment filled with objects they can identify...

Language-like Optimal Linguistic universals: speakers share a universal conceptual repertoire, considering and categorizing spatial relations in a similar way, regardless of language. Coarse-grainedness (partition height) N a tu ra ln e s s ( p a rt it io n s il h o u e tt e ) Comparing across theoretically optimal k-term partitions, we take the system with the most tightly clustered categories...

In the present paper we make some contributions to the emerging eld of so-called ontological engineering. In detail, we discuss the principles underlying knowledge acquisition from an axiomaticdeductive point of view. Then we turn to the notion of an ontology and the connection between ontology and knowledge systems. An ontology comprises ontologically basic relations such as membership, part-w...

A classical conjecture in generative linguistics is that universal restrictions on determiners in Natural Language (e.g. monotonicity, invariance, and conservativity) serve the purpose of simplifying the language acquisition task. This paper formalizes this conjecture within the PAC-learnability framework.

A fundamental question for cognitive science concerns the ways in which languages are shaped by the biases of language learners. Recent research using laboratory language learning paradigms, primarily with adults, has shown that structures or rules that are common in the languages of the world are learned or processed more easily than patterns that are rare or unattested. Here we target child l...

The artificial language Esperanto is spoken not only as a second language, by its proponents, but also as a native language by children of some of those proponents. The present study is a preliminary description of some characteristics of the Native Esperanto (NE) of eight speakers, ranging in age from six to fourteen years. As such, it is the first of its kind--previous works on NE are either ...