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Related Experiment Video

Updated: May 17, 2026

Examining Gesture Production in the Presence of Communication Challenges

Examining Gesture Production in the Presence of Communication Challenges

Published on: January 26, 2024

Language learners restructure their input to facilitate efficient communication.

Maryia Fedzechkina¹, T Florian Jaeger, Elissa L Newport

¹Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY 14627, USA.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

|October 17, 2012

Summary

Language learners systematically restructure artificial languages to improve information transfer. These changes, driven by acquisition biases, explain structural similarities found in natural languages.

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Examining Online Syntactic Processing of Spoken Complex Sentences in Chinese Using Dual-Modal Interference Tasks

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Area of Science:

Linguistics
Cognitive Science
Language Acquisition

Background:

Natural languages exhibit numerous structural similarities across diverse linguistic systems.
The origins of these cross-linguistic structural regularities are debated, with acquisition biases being a potential driver.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate whether biases during language acquisition shape linguistic structures towards communicative efficiency.
To test if learners favor systems balancing information transfer with cognitive effort.

Main Methods:

Exposing adult learners to miniature artificial languages with inefficient case marking systems in two experiments.
Analyzing structural changes learners introduced to the artificial languages over time.

Main Results:

Learners restructured the artificial languages to enhance information transfer efficiency.
The observed restructuring patterns align with typologically frequent features in natural languages.

Conclusions:

Language acquisition biases favor communicatively efficient linguistic systems.
These biases contribute to the emergence of structural similarities observed in the world's languages.