Predictability of meaning in grammatical encoding: Optional plural marking.

Area of Science:

• Linguistics
• Psycholinguistics
• Language Acquisition

Background:

• The markedness principle in linguistic theory posits that grammatically marked categories receive more encoding than unmarked ones.
• The underlying reasons for markedness, particularly the role of meaning predictability, remain incompletely understood.
• Previous evidence linking meaning predictability to markedness is primarily correlational, lacking causal validation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To experimentally investigate whether meaning predictability causally influences morphological markedness patterns.
• To assess the effect of meaning predictability on the acquisition of morphological plural marking.

Main Methods:

• Conducted two miniature language learning experiments.
• Trained participants on artificial noun-plural systems with varying meaning predictability.
• Analyzed participants' production of morphological plural marking.

Main Results:

• Learners preferentially applied plural marking to nouns with less predictable plural meanings.
• This pattern emerged even when the input data did not explicitly demonstrate such a correlation.
• Learners' behavior aligns with the hypothesis that meaning predictability drives markedness.

Conclusions:

• Meaning predictability can be a causal factor in generating linguistic markedness patterns.
• Findings support the predictability account of markedness, explaining cross-linguistic observations.
• This research sheds light on the cognitive underpinnings of grammatical encoding in language acquisition.