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The challenge of non-discreteness:

Focal structure in language

Stockholm, August 31,

2012

Andrej A. Kibrik (Institute of Linguistics RAN

and Lomonosov Moscow State University)aakibrik@gmail.com

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The problem

We tend to think about language as a system of discrete, segmental units (phonemes, morphemes, words, sentences...)

But this view does not survive an encounter with reality

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Simple example: morpheme fusion

Russian adjective детский ‘children’s, childish’det-sk-ijchild-Attr-M.NomRoot-Suffix-Ending

suffix [ d’eck’ -ij ]

root Many human languages have something

like that in morphological structure

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Similar phenomena abound at all lingustic levels

Phonemes Syllables Words Clauses Sentences

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Phonemes Coarticulation: cat keep cool Engwall (2000): articulographic study of how

pronunciation of Swedish fricatives is affected by surrounding vowels

Sequences such as asa, ɪsɪ, ɔsɔ, ʊsʊ, aɕa, ɔʂɔ, ʊfʊ, etc.

For example: context of labial vowels strongly increases lip protrusion

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Phonemes (continued) Also, the tongue

is more anterior in the context of the front vowel /ɪ/ compared to back vowels (Engwall 2000: 10) That is, boundaries between “segments” are not really segmental Trying to posit boundaries in the signal inevitably means a kind of

digitalization

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Syllables

Language speakers often naturally “feel” the syllabic structure But segmentation into syllables is usually less than clear-cut For example, speakers of Pulaar confidently segment words

into syllables, e.g. gor |ko ‘man’ But cf. the behavior of geminated consonants On the one hand, when asked to segment a word into

syllables, speakers of Pulaar usually posit a boundary between the two copies of a geminated consonant: hok |kam ‘give me’

On the other hand, a Pulaar secret language is reported the encrypting sequence lfV is inserted after the first syllable of a

word (Gaden 1914, Labouret 1952: 108): hokkamndiyam ‘give.me water’ holfokkam ndilfiyam

Geminates such as kk are thus inconsistent: in some way they belong to two different syllables in some other way they form the onset of a syllable (Koval 2000:

114, 185)

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Words

Possessive constructions N + N English is often said to have two kinds of genitives:

synthetic s-genitive: the queen’s retinue analytic of-genitive: the retinue of the queen

On the one hand, of is a preposition and thus clearly belongs to the possessor rather than to the possessed the retinue [of the queen], lots [of stuff]

On the other hand, there are indications of reanalysis Jurafsky et al. 1998: of is so often reduced that one must posit the allomorph

[ɔ] Native users of English feel that and render that in spelling, also altering the

affiliation of the clitic lots of > lotsa, couple of > coupla “Kinda outta luck” (song by Lana del Rey)

This kind of graphic practices suggest that language users attach the clitic of to the possessed rather than to the possessor

In terms of Nichols 1986, in these kinds of examples English hesitates on behaving as dependent-marking or head-marking

Of displays doubleface behavior in two ways as any clitic, it is a semi-word, that is something between a word and an affix it oscillates between two possible hosts

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Clauses

Widely held view of “syntax from the discourse perspective” (see Chafe 1994): Local discourse structure consists of quanta, or

chunks, or elementary discourse units (EDUs) (Kibrik and Podlesskaya eds. 2009)

EDUs can be defined by a set of prosodic criteria Thus identified EDUs typically coincide with

clauses The level of such coincidence mostly varies

within the range between 1/2 and 3/4

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Clauses (continued)

LanguagePercentage of clausal EDUs

English (Chafe 1994) 60%

Mandarin (Iwasaki and Tao 1993) 39.8%

Sasak (Wouk 2008) 51.7%

Japanese (Matsumoto 2000) 68%

Russian (Kibrik and Podlesskaya eds. 2009)

67.7%

Upper Kuskokwim (Kibrik 2012) 70.8%

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Clauses (continued)

However, there is a significant residue Non-clausal EDUs

Subclausal EDUs• Increments

(translation from a Russian spoken corpus “Night Dream Stories” – Kibrik and Podlesskaya eds. 2009) And suddenly I saw a box. With a ribbon on top.

Increments appear after a clear prosodic boundary At the same time, they semantically and

grammatically fit into the preceding base clause Such increments simultaneously belong and do not

belong to the preceding clause They are outliers in clause structure

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Paradigmatics So far we have only discussed difficulties associated

with the syntagmatic indentification of units The same problem applies to paradigmatic boundaries

That is, boundaries between classes, types, or categories in an inventory

Marginal phonemes “One might consider the voiceless velar fricative /x/ occurring

in words such as Bach (the German composer) or loch (a Scottish lake) as a marginal phoneme for some speakers of English” (Brinton and Brinton 2010: 53)

Russian [w] in loan words• Russian has phonemes /v/ and /u/• English William > Russian Вильям or Уильям

Vil’jam Uil’jam[v] [u],

recently [w]• English wow > Russian: usually spelled вау vau, pronounced

[wau]

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Semantics

Semantics provides particularly abundant evidence of non-discrete boundaries

Plethora of examples have been discussed in cognitive semantics

Textbook example from Labov’s 1973 “Boundaries of words and their meanings”

cup bowl

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Diachronic change

Diachrony provides innumerable examples of non-discrete boundaries between linguistic elements or stages

Hock and Joseph 1996: 237-238 Old English wēod ‘plant’ and wæ ̅d(e) ‘garment’ Both developed into modern English weed The meaning ‘garment’ only survives in a couple of

expressions, such as widow’s weed ‘a widow’s mourning clothes’

Modern speakers tend to connect this usage with the winning weed

The erstwhile meaning of wæ ̅d(e) is echoed in the modern language as a faint trace

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Language wholeness Languages are identifiable, but

every language has internal variation

Consider a very small language, Upper Kuskokwim Athabaskan

Ethnic group of about 200 individuals in central interior Alaska

About 20 remaining speakers The members of the group

have a clear feeling of identity, as well as separateness from other neighboring Athabaskan languages

Still, striking dialectal variation In particular, the rendering of

Proto-Athabaskan coronal consonant series

© Michael Krauss, 2011

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Language wholeness (continued)

Interdental

Dental Retroflex

As in:

Dialect: ‘my tongue’

‘snow’ ‘raven’

Conservative: no merger

sitsula’ tsetł' dotron' Tanana

Standard merger: loss of interdentals

sitsula’ tsetł' dotron' Tsetsaut

Downriver merger: loss of retroflex

sitsula’ tsetł' dotson' Koyukon

Merger of all three

sitsula’ tsetł' dotson' Ahtna

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Language wholeness (continued)

Note that the rendering of coronal series is traditionally used as the basis for classifying the family into branches

This situation can be explained by geographical and demographic factors The Upper Kuskokwim traditional territory probably

occupied over 50 K square kilometers Traditionally, contact between famlies/bands was

seasonal or sporadic

Still, what identifies the language’s wholeness and boundaries in terms of internal characteristics?

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Proto-languages

Linguists often speak about proto-languages (Proto-Germanic, Proto-IE, etc.), as if they were fixed, 100% homogeneous communities without any internal variation

Dahl (2001) discussed the status of Old Nordic He questions the notion of Common Nordic and the

assumption that the Scandinavians “changed their language all at the same time and in the same fashion, as if conforming to a EU regulation on the length of cucumbers” (p. 227).

Contrary to the traditional tree-like picture of a proto-language splitting into daughter languages, Dahl suggests that the spread of prestige dialects may have led to a decrease in diversity and to unification

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Language contact

Trudgill 2011: 56-58 Contact with Low German affected Scandinavian

languages significantly This influence can generally be described as

simplification That was possible because in the 1400s cities such

as Bergen and Stockholm had about 1/3 or more of German population

When non-native population reaches close to 50%, natives accommodate

Boundaries between languages are thus penetrable

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Other cognitive domains

Studies by the Russian psychologist Yuri Alexandrov Alexandrov and Sergienko 2003:

psychophysiological experiments demonstrate the non-disjunctive character of mind and behavior

• “Continuity is the overarching principle in the organization of living things at various levels” (p. 105)

Alexandrov and Alexandrova 2010: complementary, non-disjunctive character of cultures

• Niels Bohr, discussing the relationships between cultures, emphasized that, “unlike physics <...> there is no mutual exclusion of properties belonging to different cultures”.

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Intermediate conclusion

Language (as well as cognition in general) simultaneously longs for discrete, segmented structure tries to avoid it

The omnipresence of non-discreteness effects has not yet led to proper recognition in the mainstream linguistic thinking

Linguists are often bashful about non-discreteness But non-discreteness is not just a nuisance Non-discrete effects permeate every single aspect

of language This problem is in the core of theoretical debates

about language

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Possible reactions

“Digital” linguistics:

More inclusive (“analog”) linguistics: often a mere statement of continuous boundaries and countless intermediate/borderline cases

ignore non-discrete phenomena or dismiss them as minor

Ferdinand de Saussure: language only consists of identities and

differences

the discreteness

delusion

a bit too simplistic

appeal of scientific

rigor but reductionism

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Cognitive science

Wittgenstein: family resemblance Rosch: prototype theory Lakoff: radial categories

A

B

C

D A is the prototypical phoneme/word/clause/meaning...

B, C, and D are less prototypical representatives

We still need a theory for: boundaries between related categories boundaries in the syntagmatic structure

Picture from Janda and

Nesset 2012

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My main suggestion

In the case of language we see the structure that combines the properties of discrete and non-discrete: focal structure

Focal phenomena are simultaneously distinct and related

Focal structure is a special kind of structure found in linguistic phenomena, alternative to the discrete structure

It is the hallmark of linguistic and, possibly, cognitive phenomena, in constrast to simpler kinds of matter

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Various kinds of structures

▐focal point 1

focal point 2

discrete structure

▐continuous structure

focal structure

1 2

1 2

or anchor pointoutlier hybrid

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A possible analogy: neuronal structure with synapses

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Examples

▐focal point 1

focal point 2

det [c] skv w u wēod (widow’s) weed wæ̅̅d(e) Old Norse Norwegian Low

German

Syntagm.

Paradigm.

Diachr.

Lg.contact

etc., etc.

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Caveat

The claim about non-discrete boundaries should not be overstated

Phonemes, words, clauses, and languages do exist They are just not as discrete and segmental as we

apparently want them to be We should not replace the discrete structure with

the idea of a mere continuum, basically non-structure

Cf. Goddard 2010: 233 defending the discrete character of meaning by dismissing the idea of a continuum or merging

Something like focal structure is in order as the major model of linguistic and cognitive “matter”

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Peripheral status of non-discrete phenomena in linguistics

Are linguists unaware about the non-discreteness effects?

No, they are aware of them “distinct but related”

But they tend to ignore themWhy? I am not sureBut I suspect the answer is related to

the well known Kant’s problem

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Kant’s puzzle The Critique of Pure Reason: The role of observer, or

cognizer, crucially affects the knowledge of the world “The schematicism by which our understanding deals

with the phenomenal world ... is a skill so deeply hidden in the human soul that we shall hardly guess the secret trick that Nature here employs.”

It is possible that the human analytical mind is digital, and it wants its object of observation to be digital as well

In addition, standards of scientific thought have developed on the basis of physical, rather than cognitive, reality

Physical reality is much more prone to the discrete approach

Compared to physical world, in the case of language and other cognitive processes Kant’s problem is much more acute because mind here functions both as an observer and

an object of observation, so making the distinction between the two is difficult

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A paradoxical state of affairs

Language is full of non-discrete phenomena But our “digital” mind is biased towards discreteness

Perhaps, partly because of the scientific tradition based on segmentation and categorization (Aristotelian, “rational”, “left-hemispheric”, etc.)

It is like eyeglasses keeping only a part of the reality and filtering out the rest

Addressing the “analog” reality in its entirety is often perceived as pseudo-science, or quasi-science at best

Language is unknowable, a Ding an sich?

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What to do?

We need to develop a more embracing linguistics and cognitive science that address non-discrete phenomena:

not as exceptions or periphery of language and cognition

but rather as their core Can we outwit our mind? Two suggestions towards this goal

1. Object of investigation: concentrate on obviously non-discrete communication channels, not so burdened with the tradition of discrete analysis

2. Methodology: new type of models

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SUGGESTION 1: Look at communication channels other than verbal

Explore gesticulation accompanying speech Michael Tomasello (2009): in order to “understand how

humans communicate with one another using a language <…> we must first understand how humans communicate with one another using natural gestures”

I discuss a case study in “Reference of discourse” (2011) Explore prosody

Sandro Kodzasov (2011): “there is a multitude of prosodic techniques <...> defining the basic gestalts of our perception of the world”

These communication channels are obviously less discrete than the verbal code

So it may be a good idea to develop new theoretical approaches on the basis of gesticulation and prosody, then apply them to traditional, “segmental” language

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Sentences

In written language, sentences are separated from each other by dedicated punctuation marks

Is the notion of sentence applicable to spoken language? cf. the “written language bias” (Linell 2005) written language, inherently digital, hypnotizes people and

makes them think that language is generally discrete

“Is sentence viable?” (Kibrik 2008) In brief, spoken Russian displays two major prosodic

patterns: “comma intonation”: rising on the main accent of EDU “period intonation”: final falling on the main accent of EDUBut also “falling comma intonation” – non-final falling: similar to comma intonation in terms of discourse semantics formally similar to period intonation

/ ,

\ .

\ ,

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What to do?

It appears that non-final falling is not as low as final falling

But the difference cannot be identified in absolute terms

• Great variation (gender, individual)• What is final falling in one person can be non-final in

another Employ the speaker’s “prosodic portrait” Final falling , targets at the bottom

of the given speaker’s F0 range Non-final falling targets at a level several

dozen Hz (several semitones) higher than the final falling in the given speaker

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F0 graph for an example

\ozero, \malen’koe \nebol’ \brevno kakoe \mosta.

takoe, šoe.-to,

12 10 125

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There was a lake, /either a river, /or a lake, /but I guess a lake, \because somehow it was small,

\not a big one. \And across it there was a log, \like a bridge. \

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Representation of EDU continuity types (or “phase” types) in corpus

33%

23%

44%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

Finalfalling

Non-finalfalling

(Non-final)rising

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Sentences (continued) There are clearly contrasted, focal patterns:

final falling (end) rising (non-end)

Speakers and listeners usually “know” when a sentence is completed and when it is not

Spoken sentences are the prototype of written sentences

In addition, the hybrid type must be recognized: non-final falling It can be identified on the basis of speaker’s prosodic

portraits This helps to deal with tremendous phonetic variation

With this analysis, the notion of spoken sentence remains viable

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SUGGESTION 2:Entertain another type of models

Methodological point 1960s: a fashion of “mathematical

methods” in linguistics That did not bring much fruit, primarily

because of the non-discreteness effects Time for another attempt of bringing in

more useful kinds of mathematics

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Ongoing project: Modeling referential choice in discourse When we mention a person/object, we choose from a set of

options proper name: Kant description: the philosopher reduced form: he

Corpus of Wall Street Journal texts words – 45016, EDUs – 5497, anaphors – 3994

Annotation for multiple variables, candidate factors of ref. choice distances to antecedent antecedent’s syntactic role protagonisthood animacy ..............

Machine learning algorithms logical logistic regression compositions

Two-way task: Full NP vs. pronoun Three-way task: proper name vs. description vs. pronoun

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Results of machine learning modeling

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Non-categorical referential choice

100% accuracy cannot be reached The choice is not always deterministic:

often only one option is appropriate sometimes both Kant and he are appropriate

Experiment (Mariya Khudyakova) Nine texts in which the algorithms deviated in their

prediction compared to the original referential choice: pronoun instead of a proper name

Each text was presented to 60 experiment participants, in one of the two variations: original (proper name) and altered (pronoun)

Questions testing the understanding of the referent in question

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Non-categorical referential choice (continued)

In seven texts out of nine, accuracy of answers to pronouns was the same as in answers to proper names In these instances the algorithm correctly predicted a

pronoun, even though deviating from the original referential choice

In two instances participants showed a significant drop in their accuracy In these instances the algorithms erred in their prediction

Logistic regression provides the degree of certainty in prediction that can be, with due caution, interpreted as probability

In one more instance the algorithm showed too high certainty of prediction (0.89) which must not be the case given that the original choice was different We are working on the improvement of the method (Kibrik et

al. ms. 2012)

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New type of models (continued)

Non-categorical referential choice: a hybrid between the clear, focal instances

Probabilistic modeling and machine learning techniques can be used to simulate human behavior in non-categorical situations

We need to employ mathematical methods appropriate for the “cognitive matter”

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Conclusion Just as we invoke scientific thinking, we tend to

immediately turn to discrete analysis This may the reason why discrete linguistics is so

popular, in spite of the omnipresence and obviousness of non-discrete effects

This may be our inherent bias, or a habit developed in natural sciences, or a cultural preference

But in the case of language and other cognitive processes we do see the limits of the traditional discrete approach

It remains an open question if linguists and cognitive scientists are able to eventually overcome the strong bias towards “pure reason” and discrete analysis, or language will remain a Ding an sich

But it is worth trying to circumvent this bias and to seriously explore the focal, non-discrete structure that is in the very core of language and cognition

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Thanks for your attention

CONGENIAL QUOTATIONS

“Unfortunately, or luckily, no language is tyrannically consistent. All grammars leak.” (Sapir 1921: 38)

“Words as well as the world itself display the ‘orderly heterogeneity’ which characterizes language as a whole” (Labov 1973: 30)

“The mind-brain is both modular and interconnected <...> To insist on one to the exclustion of the other is to short-change the enormous complexity of this quintessentially hybrid system” (Givón 1999: 107-108)

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References

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Acknowledgements

Yuri AlexandrovMira BergelsonSvetlana BurlakOlga Fedorova

Vera PodlesskayaNatalia SlioussarValery Solovyev