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Abstract

In holistic theories of protolanguage, a vital step is the fractionation process where holistic utter- ances are broken down into segments, and segments associated with semantic components. One problem for this process may be the occurrence of counterexamples to any segment-meaning connection. The actual abundance of such counterexamples is a contentious issue (Smith, 2006; Tallerman, 2007). Here I present calculations of the prevalence of counterexamples in model languages. It is found that counterexamples are indeed abundant, much more numerous than positive examples for any plausible holistic language.

@incollection{johansson08evolang7th,
  author={Sverker Johansson},
  title={Seeking Compositionality in Holistic Proto-Language without Substructure: Do Counter-Examples Overwhelm the Fractionation Process?},
  year={2008},
  month={March},
  pages={171-178},
  editor={A. D. M. Smith and K. Smith and R. Ferrer-i-Cancho},
  publisher={World Scientific},
  booktitle={Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on the Evolution of Language},
  url={http://www.isrl.uiuc.edu/~amag/langev/paper/johansson08evolang7th.html}
}