Abstract
AbstractThis paper proposes a typology of compositionality as manifest in human language and animal communication. At the heart of the typology is a distinction between bare compositionality, in which the meaning of a complex expression is determined solely by the meanings of its constituents, and constructional compositionality, in which the meaning of a complex expression is determined by the meanings of its constituents and also by various aspects of its structure. Bare and constructional compositionality may be observed in human language as well as in various animal communication systems, including primates and birds. Architecturally, bare compositionality provides the foundations for constructional compositionality, while phylogenetically, bare compositionality is a potential starting point for the evolution of constructional compositionality in animal communication and human language.
Funder
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Subject
Animal Science and Zoology,Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
Reference86 articles.
1. Arnold, K., & Zuberbühler, K. (2006). Language evolution: Semantic combinations in primate calls. Nature, 441, 303.
2. Arnold, K., & Zuberbühler, K. (2012). Call combinations in monkeys: Compositional or idiomatic expressions? Brain and Language, 120(3), 303–309.
3. Arnold, K., & Zuberbühler, K. (2013). Female putty-nosed monkeys use experimentally-altered contextual information to disambiguate the cause of male alarm calls. PLoS One, 8(6), e65660.
4. Baggio, G., Lambalgen, M., & Hagoort, P. (2012). The processing consequences of compositionality. In M. Werning, W. Hinzen, & E. Machery (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Compositionality (pp. 655–672). Oxford University Press.
5. Blevins, J. P. (2016). Word and Paradigm Morphology. Oxford University Press.
Cited by
2 articles.
订阅此论文施引文献
订阅此论文施引文献，注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献，订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献