{"pk":28866,"title":"Are Cross-Linguistically Frequent Semantic Systems Easier to\nLearn? The Case of Evidentiality","subtitle":null,"abstract":"It is often assumed that cross-linguistically more prevalent\ndistinctions are easier to learn (Typological Prevalence\nHypothesis - TPH). Prior work supports this hypothesis in\nphonology, morphology and syntax but has not addressed\nsemantics. Using an Artificial Language Learning paradigm,\nwe explore the learnability of semantic distinctions within the\ndomain of evidentiality (i.e. the linguistic encoding of\ninformation sources). Our results support the TPH, since the\nmost prevalent evidential system was learned best while the\nmost rare evidentiality system yielded the worst learnability\nresults. Furthermore, our results indicate that, cross-\nlinguistically, indirect information sources seem to be marked\npreferentially (and acquired more easily) compared to direct\nsources. We explain this pattern in terms of the pragmatic need\nto mark indirect, potentially more unreliable sources over\ndirect sources of information.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[{"word":"evidentiality; artificial language learning;\nlearnability; semantics; information sources"}],"section":"Papers with Poster Presentations","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6049n3j0","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Dionysia","middle_name":"","last_name":"Saratsli","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of Delaware","department":""},{"first_name":"Stefan","middle_name":"","last_name":"Bartell","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of Delaware","department":""},{"first_name":"Anna","middle_name":"","last_name":"Papafragou","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of Delaware","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2019-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/28866/galley/18737/download/"}]}