title: Phonemic Coding Might Result From Sensory-Motor Coupling Dynamics creator: Oudeyer, Pierre-Yves subject: Language subject: Dynamical Systems subject: Computational Linguistics subject: Computational Neuroscience subject: Psycholinguistics subject: Neural Nets subject: Speech subject: Theoretical Biology subject: Neurolinguistics subject: Artificial Intelligence subject: Phonology description: Human sound systems are invariably phonemically coded. Furthermore, phoneme inventories follow very particular tendancies. To explain these phenomena, there existed so far three kinds of approaches : ``Chomskyan''/cognitive innatism, morpho-perceptual innatism and the more recent approach of ``language as a complex cultural system which adapts under the pressure of efficient communication''. The two first approaches are clearly not satisfying, while the third, even if much more convincing, makes a lot of speculative assumptions and did not really bring answers to the question of phonemic coding. We propose here a new hypothesis based on a low-level model of sensory-motor interactions. We show that certain very simple and non language-specific neural devices allow a population of agents to build signalling systems without any functional pressure. Moreover, these systems are phonemically coded. Using a realistic vowel articulatory synthesizer, we show that the inventories of vowels have striking similarities with human vowel systems. publisher: MIT Press contributor: Hallam, B. Hallam, D. Floreano, J. Hallam, G. Hayes, J-A. Meyer date: 2002 type: Conference Paper type: PeerReviewed format: application/pdf identifier: http://cogprints.org/2658/1/sab02.pdf identifier: Oudeyer, Pierre-Yves (2002) Phonemic Coding Might Result From Sensory-Motor Coupling Dynamics. [Conference Paper] relation: http://cogprints.org/2658/