Than reflecting potentially universal principles of cognition. However, the crucial question of Experiment 2 is whether we have any evidence that SVO emerges as a response to our manipulations when it cannot be order Olumacostat glasaretil attributed to influence from the participants’ native language. As we have noted above, SVO does emerge when Turkish speakers describe reversible events with a self-generated gestural lexicon, an effect that cannot be attributed to the speakers’ native language word order. One final aspect of the present data deserves comment. We found that native Turkish speakers avoided using SOV descriptions for reversible events, which replicates a pattern described by Hall, Mayberry, and Ferreira (submitted). The present observation is Isovaleryl-Val-Val-Sta-Ala-Sta-OH molecular weight especially noteworthy because SOV is the characteristic order of Turkish participants’ native language for both reversible and non-reversible events. Therefore, the pressure that drove these participants to avoid SOV must have been strong enough to outweigh the natural tendency to describe events by using the structure of one’s native language. Similar findings in SOV speakers have also been observed by Gibson et al. (in press), who tested Japanese-English and Korean-English bilinguals, and by Meir et al. (2010), who reported preliminary data from 9 Turkish monolinguals.General DiscussionThe experiments presented here show two main points. First, we demonstrated that even native speakers of an SOV language (Turkish) avoid using SOV to describe reversible events in pantomime. This is consistent with earlier results from English speakers (Gibson et al., in press; Hall, Mayberry, Ferreira, submitted), as well as preliminary data from 9 Turkish monolinguals (Meir et al., 2010) and from Japanese-English bilinguals (Gibson et al., in press). Despite giving contrasting explanations for why people avoid SOV for reversible events, these authors all agree that there is some functional motivation behind this behavior, and suggest that whatever the cause might be, the same functional motivation likely also applies to natural language. Second, the present experiments show that SVO may arise in part because it is an efficient way to describe reversible events while still keeping subjects before objects. In previous studies, participants often used constituent orders that were inefficient (eitherCogn Sci. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2015 June 01.Hall et al.Pageunderinformative or repetitious) or placed objects before subjects; this happened especially often for reversible events. We hypothesized that these inefficient and O-before-S orders were relatively common primarily due to the absence of other pressures that act on natural language. To test this hypothesis, we manipulated two aspects of the pantomime task. First, since a lexicon is one of the earliest language structures to emerge in new languages, we instructed some participants to create and use a gestural lexicon. Second, because natural languages arise in the context of human relationships, we instructed half of these participants to teach their gestures to the experimenter (the shared condition), while the other half performed the task alone (the private condition). We compared the constituent orders produced by the participants in each of these conditions against those produced by participants in the baseline condition, who received no special instructions (as in previous experiments). We found that both English and Turkish speakers were more likely to.Than reflecting potentially universal principles of cognition. However, the crucial question of Experiment 2 is whether we have any evidence that SVO emerges as a response to our manipulations when it cannot be attributed to influence from the participants’ native language. As we have noted above, SVO does emerge when Turkish speakers describe reversible events with a self-generated gestural lexicon, an effect that cannot be attributed to the speakers’ native language word order. One final aspect of the present data deserves comment. We found that native Turkish speakers avoided using SOV descriptions for reversible events, which replicates a pattern described by Hall, Mayberry, and Ferreira (submitted). The present observation is especially noteworthy because SOV is the characteristic order of Turkish participants’ native language for both reversible and non-reversible events. Therefore, the pressure that drove these participants to avoid SOV must have been strong enough to outweigh the natural tendency to describe events by using the structure of one’s native language. Similar findings in SOV speakers have also been observed by Gibson et al. (in press), who tested Japanese-English and Korean-English bilinguals, and by Meir et al. (2010), who reported preliminary data from 9 Turkish monolinguals.General DiscussionThe experiments presented here show two main points. First, we demonstrated that even native speakers of an SOV language (Turkish) avoid using SOV to describe reversible events in pantomime. This is consistent with earlier results from English speakers (Gibson et al., in press; Hall, Mayberry, Ferreira, submitted), as well as preliminary data from 9 Turkish monolinguals (Meir et al., 2010) and from Japanese-English bilinguals (Gibson et al., in press). Despite giving contrasting explanations for why people avoid SOV for reversible events, these authors all agree that there is some functional motivation behind this behavior, and suggest that whatever the cause might be, the same functional motivation likely also applies to natural language. Second, the present experiments show that SVO may arise in part because it is an efficient way to describe reversible events while still keeping subjects before objects. In previous studies, participants often used constituent orders that were inefficient (eitherCogn Sci. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2015 June 01.Hall et al.Pageunderinformative or repetitious) or placed objects before subjects; this happened especially often for reversible events. We hypothesized that these inefficient and O-before-S orders were relatively common primarily due to the absence of other pressures that act on natural language. To test this hypothesis, we manipulated two aspects of the pantomime task. First, since a lexicon is one of the earliest language structures to emerge in new languages, we instructed some participants to create and use a gestural lexicon. Second, because natural languages arise in the context of human relationships, we instructed half of these participants to teach their gestures to the experimenter (the shared condition), while the other half performed the task alone (the private condition). We compared the constituent orders produced by the participants in each of these conditions against those produced by participants in the baseline condition, who received no special instructions (as in previous experiments). We found that both English and Turkish speakers were more likely to.