Previous research in the evolutionary and psychological sciences has suggested that markers or tags of ethnic or group membership may help to solve cooperation and coordination problems. Cheating remains, however, a problem for these views, insofar as it is possible to fake the tag. While evolutionary psychologists have suggested that humans evolved the propensity to overcome this free rider problem, it is unclear how this module might manifest at the group level. In this study, we investigate the degree to which native and non-native speakers of accents – which are candidates for tags of group membership – spoken in the UK and Ireland can detect mimicry. We find that people are, overall, better than chance at detecting mimicry, and secondly we find substantial inter-group heterogeneity, suggesting that cultural evolutionary processes drive the manifestations of cheater detection. We discuss alternative explanations and suggest avenues of further inquiry.

Aristophanes of Byzantium is credited with inventing the signs for Greek accents, breathings and vowel lengths, according to a single source: a short text found in two 16th-century Paris manuscripts. The passage has a doubtful history, but the story it tells is of considerable interest. We first provide a new edition of this text, based on a new examination of both manuscripts, and a complete translation. Secondly we argue that the author consulted a source that was in Latin and that dealt at least in part with the Latin accent. We conclude by considering the implications of our proposal for the text’s date and circumstances of composition.

This article compares three accounts of Finnish intonation using a perception experiment with manipulated f0 contours. The experiment involved compound/noun phrase minimal pairs differing in f0 pattern. To address the question of tonal specification, manipulations changed f0 contours of recorded compound words, associating them with f0 patterns having different components of the naturally occurring f0 rise-fall contour. Thus, the study investigated which tonal targets were crucial for the perception of a complete tonal contour inducing a noun phrase interpretation. Results suggested that the falling part of the rise-falls, modelled as realisations of a high and a following low target, was essential. They furthermore revealed evidence for these targets being associated with prosodic phrases, as well as for Finnish tonal targets being characterised by a flexibility that contrasts with accent realisations in languages like English.