Languages exhibit structure at a number of levels, including at the level of phonology, the system of meaningless combinatorial units from which words are constructed. Phonological systems typically exhibit greater dispersion than would be expected by chance. Several theoretical models have been proposed to account for this, and a common theme is that such organization emerges as a result of the competing forces acting on production and perception. Fundamentally, this implies a cultural evolutionary explanation, by which emergent organization is an adaptive response to the pressures of communicative interaction. This process is hard to investigate empirically using natural-language data. We therefore designed an experimental task in which pairs of participants play a communicative game using a novel medium in which varying the position of one’s finger on a trackpad produced different colors. This task allowed us to manipulate the alignment of pressures acting on production and perception. Here we used it to investigate (a) whether above-chance levels of dispersion would emerge in the resulting systems, (b) whether dispersion would correlate with communicative success, and (c) how systems would differ if the pressures acting on perception were misaligned with pressures acting on production (and which would take precedence). We found that above-chance levels of dispersion emerged when pressures were aligned, but that the primary driver of communicative success was the alignment of production and perception pressures rather than dispersion itself. When they were misaligned, participants both found the task harder and (driven by perceptual demands) created systems with lower levels of dispersion.

中文翻译：

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分散、交流和对齐：组合音韵学中结构出现的实验研究

语言在多个层次上表现出结构，包括在音系层次上，即构成单词的无意义组合单元系统。音系系统通常表现出比偶然预期更大的分散。已经提出了几种理论模型来解释这一点，一个共同的主题是，这种组织是作用于生产和感知的竞争力量的结果。从根本上说，这意味着一种文化进化的解释，即新兴组织是对交流互动压力的适应性反应。这个过程很难使用自然语言数据进行实证研究。因此，我们设计了一项实验任务，其中成对的参与者使用一种新颖的媒介玩交流游戏，在这种游戏中，改变手指在触控板上的位置会产生不同的颜色。这项任务使我们能够操纵作用于生产和感知的压力的对齐。在这里，我们用它来研究（a）结果系统中是否会出现高于机会的分散水平，（b）分散是否与交流成功相关，以及（c）如果作用于感知的压力错位，系统将如何不同对生产施加压力（并且优先考虑）。我们发现当压力一致时会出现高于机会的分散水平，但是，传播成功的主要驱动力是生产和感知压力的一致性，而不是分散本身。当他们错位时，参与者都发现任务更难，并且（由感知需求驱动）创建了分散程度较低的系统。