期刊名称：Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
印刷版ISSN：0027-8424
电子版ISSN：1091-6490
出版年度：2016
卷号：113
期号：48
页码：13702-13707
DOI：10.1073/pnas.1613749113
语种：English
出版社：The National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
摘要：SignificanceAcross languages, certain linguistic forms are systematically preferred to others (e.g., blog > lbog), but whether such preferences reflect abstract linguistic principles or the sensorimotor demands associated with the encoding of linguistic stimuli is unknown. To inform this debate, here we examine whether the preferences for linguistic forms can be disentangled from their sensorimotor characteristics. Our results demonstrate that peoples linguistic preferences doubly dissociate from the demands exacted by the linguistic stimulus: A single stimulus can elicit diverse percepts, whereas each such percept can remain invariant despite radical changes to stimulus modality--speech and signs. These conclusions are in line with the possibility that linguistic principles are amodal and abstract. Does knowledge of language consist of abstract principles, or is it fully embodied in the sensorimotor system? To address this question, we investigate the double identity of doubling (e.g., slaflaf, or generally, XX; where X stands for a phonological constituent). Across languages, doubling is known to elicit conflicting preferences at different levels of linguistic analysis (phonology vs. morphology). Here, we show that these preferences are active in the brains of individual speakers, and they are demonstrably distinct from sensorimotor pressures. We first demonstrate that doubling in novel English words elicits divergent percepts: Viewed as meaningless (phonological) forms, doubling is disliked (e.g., slaflaf < slafmak), but once doubling in form is systematically linked to meaning (e.g., slaf = ball, slaflaf = balls), the doubling aversion shifts into a reliable (morphological) preference. We next show that sign-naive speakers spontaneously project these principles to novel signs in American Sign Language, and their capacity to do so depends on the structure of their spoken language (English vs. Hebrew). These results demonstrate that linguistic preferences doubly dissociate from sensorimotor demands: A single stimulus can elicit diverse percepts, yet these percepts are invariant across stimulus modality--for speech and signs. These conclusions are in line with the possibility that some linguistic principles are abstract, and they apply broadly across language modality.
