Publications

Journal articles

Schouwstra, M., Naegeli, D., Kirby, S. (in press). Investigating word order emergence: constraints from cognition and communication. Frontiers in Psychology

Kirton, F., Kirby, S., Smith, K., Culbertson, J., & Schouwstra, M. (2021). Constituent order in silent gesture reflects the perspective of the producer. Journal of Language Evolution, 6(1), 54-76.

Motamedi, Y., Smith, K., Schouwstra, M., Culbertson, J., & Kirby, S. (2021). The emergence of systematic argument distinctions in artificial sign languages. Journal of Language Evolution, 6(2), 77-98

Culbertson, J., Schouwstra, M., & Kirby, S. (2020). From the world to word order: deriving biases in noun phrase order from statistical properties of the world. Language, 96(3), 696-717.

Sato, A., Schouwstra, M. Flaherty, M., Kirby, S. (2020). Do all aspect of learning benefit from iconicity? Evidence from motion capture. Language and Cognition, 12(1). DOI: 10.1017/langcog.2019.37

Schouwstra, M., de Swart, H., and Thompson, B. (2019). Interpreting Silent Gesture: cognitive biases and rational inference in emerging language systems. Cognitive Science 43(7). DOI: 10.1111/cogs.12732

Motamedi, Y., Schouwstra, M., Culbertson, J., Smith, K., and Kirby, S. (2019). Evolving artificial sign languages in the lab: from improvised gesture to systematic sign. Cognition (192). DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2019.05.001

Schouwstra, M. (2017). Temporal structure in emerging language: From natural data to silent gesture. Cognitive Science. DOI: 10.1111/cogs.12441

Motamedi, Y., Schouwstra, M., & Kirby, S. (2017). An evolutionary approach to sign language emergence: from state to process. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 40, 35–36. DOI: 10.1017/S0140525X15003003

Schouwstra, M., & de Swart, H. (2014). The semantic origins of word order. Cognition, 131(3), 431-6. DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2014.03.004

Books

Schouwstra, M. (2012). Semantic structures, communicative strategies and the emergence of language. (LOT Dissertation series; No. 312). Utrecht: LOT.

A.D.M. Smith, M. Schouwstra, B. de Boer, K. Smith (Eds.) (2010). The Evolution of Language. Proceedings of the 8th international conference (EvoLang8). World Scientific.

Articles in collections, reviews, proceedings papers

Motamedi, Y., Wolters, L., Naegeli, D., Schouwstra, M., & Kirby, S. (2021). Regularisation, Systematicity and Naturalness in a Silent Gesture Learning Task. In 43rd Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2021): Comparative Cognition Animal Minds : Vienna, Austria, 26-29 July 2021 (Vol. 3, pp. 1451-1457). (Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society; Vol. 43). Cognitive Science Society.

Royka, A., Schouwstra, M., Kirby, S., & Jara-Ettinger, J. (2021). I Know You Know I’m Signaling: Novel gestures are designed to guide observers’ inferences about communicative goals. In 43rd Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2021): Comparative Cognition Animal Minds : Vienna, Austria, 26-29 July 2021 (Vol. 2, pp. 1009). (Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society; Vol. 43). Cognitive Science Society.

Carcassi, F., Schouwstra, M. & Kirby, S. (2020). The Advantage of Extreme Meanings in Cultural Evolution. In Ravignani, A., Barbieri, C., Martins, M., Flaherty, M., Jadoul, Y., Lattenkamp, E., Little, H., Mudd, K. & Verhoef, T. (Eds.): The Evolution of Language: Proceedings of the 13th International Conference (EvoLang13). doi:10.17617/2.3190925.

Carcassi, F., Kirby, S., Schouwstra, M. (2019) The evolution of adjectival monotonicity. Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung.

Flaherty, M., Schouwstra, M. & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2018). Do we see word order patterns from silent gesture studies in a new natural language? In Cuskley, C., Flaherty, M., Little, H., McCrohon, L., Ravignani, A. & Verhoef, T. (Eds.): The Evolution of Language: Proceedings of the 12th International Conference (EVOLANGXII). doi:10.12775/3991-1.030

Kirby, S., Culbertson, J. & Schouwstra, M. (2018). The origins of word order universals: evidence from corpus statistics and silent gesture. In: The Evolution of Language: Proceedings of the 12th International Conference (EVOLANGXII). doi:10.12775/3991-1.051

Kirton, F., Schouwstra, M., Culbertson, J., Smith, K. & Kirby, S. (2018). Constituent order in improvised gesture reflects speaker perspective. In: The Evolution of Language: Proceedings of the 12th International Conference (EVOLANGXII). doi:10.12775/3991-1.052

Sato, A., Ramsammy, M., Schouwstra, M. & Kirby, S. (2018). I see what you did there: the role of iconicity in the acquisition of signs. In: The Evolution of Language: Proceedings of the 12th International Conference (EVOLANGXII). doi:10.12775/3991-1.120

Shurley, J., Schouwstra, M. & Pickering, M. (2018). Structural alignment in cross-modal priming: linguistic representation is shared between gesture and speech. In: The Evolution of Language: Proceedings of the 12th International Conference (EVOLANGXII). doi:10.12775/ 3991-1.111

Motamedi, Y., Schouwstra, M., Smith, K., Culbertson, J. & Kirby, S. (2018). The cultural evolution of spatial modulations in artificial sign languages. In: The Evolution of Language: Proceedings of the 12th International Conference (EVOLANGXII). doi:10.12775/3991-1.078

Schouwstra, M., Kirby, S., & Culbertson, J. (2017). Word order universals reflect cognitive biases: Evidence from silent gesture. Proceedings of the 39th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.

Motamedi, Y., Smith, K., Schouwstra, M., & Kirby, S. (2017). The cultural evolution of systematic spatial reference. Proceedings of the 39th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.

Schouwstra, M. (2016). Meaning (Philosophy). In T. K. Shackelford, & V. A. Weekes-Shackelford (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer.

Schouwstra, M. (2016). Review of Alferink, I., Dimensions of convergence in bilingual speech and gesture. Nederlandse Taalkunde, 21(1).

Culbertson, J., Kirby, S., & Schouwstra, M. (2016). Word order universals reflect cognitive biases: Evidence from silent gesture. In S. G. Roberts, C. Cuskley, L. McCrohon, L. Barceló-Coblijn, O. Féher, & T. Verhoef (Eds.), The Evolution of Language: Proceedings of the 11th International Conference (EVOLANG11).

Schouwstra, M., Smith, K., & Kirby, S. (2016). From natural order to convention in silent gesture. In S. G. Roberts, C. Cuskley, L. McCrohon, L. Barceló-Coblijn, O. Feher, & T. Verhoef (Eds.), The Evolution of Language: Proceedings of the 11th International Conference (EVOLANG11).

Thompson, B., Schouwstra, M., & de Swart, H. (2016). Interpreting silent gesture. In S. G. Roberts, C. Cuskley, L. McCrohon, L. Barceló-Coblijn, O. Feher, & T. Verhoef (Eds.), The Evolution of Language: Proceedings of the 11th International Conference (EVOLANG11).

Schouwstra, M. (2014). About time: semantic structure in emerging language. In E.A. Cartmill, S. Roberts, H. Lyn, H. Cornish (Eds.), The Evolution of Language: Proceedings of the 10th International Conference (EVOLANG10).

Schouwstra, M., Van Leeuwen, A., Marien, N., Smit, M. & De Swart, H. (2011). Semantic Structure in Improvised Communication. In L. Carlson, C. Hoelscher & T. Shipley (Eds.), Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Cognitive Science Society, pp. 1497-1502.

Schouwstra, M. (2010). Language evolution: the view from second language learners. In A.D.M. Smith, M. Schouwstra, B. de Boer, & K. Smith (Eds.), The Evolution of Language: Proceedings of the 8th International Conference (EVOLANG8). World Scientific.

Schouwstra, M. (2008). On there and then: from object permanence to displaced reference. In A. D. M. Smith, K. Smith, & R. Ferrer i Cancho (Eds.), The Evolution of Language. World Scientific.

Schouwstra, M. (2007). Displaced reference in the evolution of language and cognition. In: M.E. Kluck & E.J. Smits (Eds.), Proceedings of the Fifth Semantics in the Netherlands Day (SiN V).