Phonemic coding might be a result of sensory-motorcoupling dynamics
Résumé
Human sound systems are invariably phonemically coded. Furthermore,phoneme inventories follow very particular tendancies. To explain these phenomena, there existed so far three kinds of approaches : "Chomskyan"/cognitive innatism, morpho-perceptual innatism and the more recent approach of "language as a complex cultural systemwhich adapts under the pressure of efficient communication". The two first approaches are clearly not satisfying, whilethe third, even if much more convincing, makes a lot of speculative assumptions and did notreally bring answers to the question of phonemic coding. We proposehere a new hypothesis based on a low-level model ofsensory-motor interactions. We show that certain very simple and non language-specific neural devices allow a population of agents to build signalling systemswithout any functional pressure. Moreover, these systemsare phonemically coded. Using a realistic vowel articulatorysynthesizer, we show that the inventories of vowels have striking similarities with human vowel systems.
Domaines
Linguistique
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