Using leap motion to investigate the emergence of structure in speech and language

Eryilmaz, Kerem; Little, Hannah

Abstract

© 2016, The Author(s). In evolutionary linguistics, experiments using artificial signal spaces are being used to investigate the emergenceof speech structure. These signal spaces need to be continuous, non-discretized spaces from which discrete unitsand patterns can emerge. They need to be dissimilar from—but comparable with—the vocal tract, in order tominimize interference from pre-existing linguistic knowledge, while informing us about language. This is a hardbalance to strike. This article outlines a new approach that uses the Leap Motion, an infrared controller that canconvert manual movement in 3d space into sound. The signal space using this approach is more flexible than signalspaces in previous attempts. Further, output data using this approach is simpler to arrange and analyze. Theexperimental interface was built using free, and mostly open- source libraries in Python. We provide our sourcecode for other researchers as open source.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Nov 8, 2016
• Online Publication Date: Nov 8, 2016
• Publication Date: Oct 1, 2017
• Deposit Date: Dec 18, 2017
• Publicly Available Date: Dec 18, 2017
• Journal: Behavior Research Methods
• Print ISSN: 1554-351X
• Electronic ISSN: 1554-3528
• Publisher: Springer (part of Springer Nature)
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 49
• Issue: 5
• Pages: 1748-1768
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-016-0818-x
• Keywords: artificial language learning, language evolution, leap motion, python signal space proxies, combinatorialstructure
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/880217
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/s13428-016-0818-x
• Contract Date: Dec 18, 2017