Community structure in the phonological network
Community structure, which refers to the presence of densely connected groups within a larger network, is a common feature of several real-world networks from a variety of domains such as the human brain, social networks of hunter-gatherers and business organizations, and the World Wide Web (Porter...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Frontiers Media S.A.
2013-08-01
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| Series: | Frontiers in Psychology |
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| Online Access: | http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00553/full |
| _version_ | 1811303635806584832 |
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| author | Cynthia S. Q. Siew |
| author_facet | Cynthia S. Q. Siew |
| author_sort | Cynthia S. Q. Siew |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Community structure, which refers to the presence of densely connected groups within a larger network, is a common feature of several real-world networks from a variety of domains such as the human brain, social networks of hunter-gatherers and business organizations, and the World Wide Web (Porter et al., 2009). Using a community detection technique known as the Louvain optimization method, 17 communities were extracted from the giant component of the phonological network described in Vitevitch (2008). Additional analyses comparing the lexical and phonological characteristics of words in these communities against words in randomly generated communities revealed several novel discoveries. Larger communities tend to consist of short, frequent words of high degree and low age of acquisition ratings, and smaller communities tend to consist of longer, less frequent words of low degree and high age of acquisition ratings. Real communities also contained fewer different phonological segments compared to random communities, although the number of occurrences of phonological segments found in real communities was much higher than that of the same phonological segments in random communities. Interestingly, the observation that relatively few biphones occur very frequently and a large number of biphones occur rarely within communities mirrors the pattern of the overall frequency of words in a language (Zipf, 1935). The present findings have important implications for understanding the dynamics of activation spread among words in the phonological network that are relevant to lexical processing, as well as understanding the mechanisms that underlie language acquisition and the evolution of language. |
| first_indexed | 2024-04-13T07:51:19Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-88c893b5ff8d4647a92e7e249fd6dd24 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1664-1078 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-04-13T07:51:19Z |
| publishDate | 2013-08-01 |
| publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Frontiers in Psychology |
| spelling | doaj.art-88c893b5ff8d4647a92e7e249fd6dd242022-12-22T02:55:31ZengFrontiers Media S.A.Frontiers in Psychology1664-10782013-08-01410.3389/fpsyg.2013.0055355247Community structure in the phonological networkCynthia S. Q. Siew0University of KansasCommunity structure, which refers to the presence of densely connected groups within a larger network, is a common feature of several real-world networks from a variety of domains such as the human brain, social networks of hunter-gatherers and business organizations, and the World Wide Web (Porter et al., 2009). Using a community detection technique known as the Louvain optimization method, 17 communities were extracted from the giant component of the phonological network described in Vitevitch (2008). Additional analyses comparing the lexical and phonological characteristics of words in these communities against words in randomly generated communities revealed several novel discoveries. Larger communities tend to consist of short, frequent words of high degree and low age of acquisition ratings, and smaller communities tend to consist of longer, less frequent words of low degree and high age of acquisition ratings. Real communities also contained fewer different phonological segments compared to random communities, although the number of occurrences of phonological segments found in real communities was much higher than that of the same phonological segments in random communities. Interestingly, the observation that relatively few biphones occur very frequently and a large number of biphones occur rarely within communities mirrors the pattern of the overall frequency of words in a language (Zipf, 1935). The present findings have important implications for understanding the dynamics of activation spread among words in the phonological network that are relevant to lexical processing, as well as understanding the mechanisms that underlie language acquisition and the evolution of language.http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00553/fullphonologycommunity structurelanguage acquisitionlanguage evolutionLexical Processingmental Lexicon |
| spellingShingle | Cynthia S. Q. Siew Community structure in the phonological network Frontiers in Psychology phonology community structure language acquisition language evolution Lexical Processing mental Lexicon |
| title | Community structure in the phonological network |
| title_full | Community structure in the phonological network |
| title_fullStr | Community structure in the phonological network |
| title_full_unstemmed | Community structure in the phonological network |
| title_short | Community structure in the phonological network |
| title_sort | community structure in the phonological network |
| topic | phonology community structure language acquisition language evolution Lexical Processing mental Lexicon |
| url | http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00553/full |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT cynthiasqsiew communitystructureinthephonologicalnetwork |