@inproceedings{brochhagen-boleda-2022-interaction-cognitive,
title = "The interaction between cognitive ease and informativeness shapes the lexicons of natural languages",
author = "Brochhagen, Thomas and
Boleda, Gemma",
editor = "Serikov, Oleg and
Voloshina, Ekaterina and
Postnikova, Anna and
Klyachko, Elena and
Neminova, Ekaterina and
Vylomova, Ekaterina and
Shavrina, Tatiana and
Ferrand, Eric Le and
Malykh, Valentin and
Tyers, Francis and
Arkhangelskiy, Timofey and
Mikhailov, Vladislav and
Fenogenova, Alena",
booktitle = "Proceedings of the first workshop on NLP applications to field linguistics",
month = oct,
year = "2022",
address = "Gyeongju, Republic of Korea",
publisher = "International Conference on Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2022.fieldmatters-1.5",
pages = "42--44",
abstract = "It is common for languages to express multiple meanings with the same word, a phenomenon known as colexification. For instance, the meanings FINGER and TOE colexify in the word {``}dedo{''} in Spanish, while they do not colexify in English. Colexification has been suggested to follow universal constraints. In particular, previous work has shown that related meanings are more prone to colexify. This tendency has been explained in terms of the cognitive pressure for ease, since expressing related meanings with the same word makes lexicons easier to learn and use. The present study examines the interplay between this pressure and a competing universal constraint, the functional pressure for languages to maximize informativeness. We hypothesize that meanings are more likely to colexify if they are related (fostering ease), but not so related as to become confusable and cause misunderstandings (fostering informativeness). We find support for this principle in data from over 1200 languages and 1400 meanings. Our results thus suggest that universal principles shape the lexicons of natural languages. More broadly, they contribute to the growing body of evidence suggesting that languages evolve to strike a balance between competing functional and cognitive pressures.",
}
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<abstract>It is common for languages to express multiple meanings with the same word, a phenomenon known as colexification. For instance, the meanings FINGER and TOE colexify in the word “dedo” in Spanish, while they do not colexify in English. Colexification has been suggested to follow universal constraints. In particular, previous work has shown that related meanings are more prone to colexify. This tendency has been explained in terms of the cognitive pressure for ease, since expressing related meanings with the same word makes lexicons easier to learn and use. The present study examines the interplay between this pressure and a competing universal constraint, the functional pressure for languages to maximize informativeness. We hypothesize that meanings are more likely to colexify if they are related (fostering ease), but not so related as to become confusable and cause misunderstandings (fostering informativeness). We find support for this principle in data from over 1200 languages and 1400 meanings. Our results thus suggest that universal principles shape the lexicons of natural languages. More broadly, they contribute to the growing body of evidence suggesting that languages evolve to strike a balance between competing functional and cognitive pressures.</abstract>
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%0 Conference Proceedings
%T The interaction between cognitive ease and informativeness shapes the lexicons of natural languages
%A Brochhagen, Thomas
%A Boleda, Gemma
%Y Serikov, Oleg
%Y Voloshina, Ekaterina
%Y Postnikova, Anna
%Y Klyachko, Elena
%Y Neminova, Ekaterina
%Y Vylomova, Ekaterina
%Y Shavrina, Tatiana
%Y Ferrand, Eric Le
%Y Malykh, Valentin
%Y Tyers, Francis
%Y Arkhangelskiy, Timofey
%Y Mikhailov, Vladislav
%Y Fenogenova, Alena
%S Proceedings of the first workshop on NLP applications to field linguistics
%D 2022
%8 October
%I International Conference on Computational Linguistics
%C Gyeongju, Republic of Korea
%F brochhagen-boleda-2022-interaction-cognitive
%X It is common for languages to express multiple meanings with the same word, a phenomenon known as colexification. For instance, the meanings FINGER and TOE colexify in the word “dedo” in Spanish, while they do not colexify in English. Colexification has been suggested to follow universal constraints. In particular, previous work has shown that related meanings are more prone to colexify. This tendency has been explained in terms of the cognitive pressure for ease, since expressing related meanings with the same word makes lexicons easier to learn and use. The present study examines the interplay between this pressure and a competing universal constraint, the functional pressure for languages to maximize informativeness. We hypothesize that meanings are more likely to colexify if they are related (fostering ease), but not so related as to become confusable and cause misunderstandings (fostering informativeness). We find support for this principle in data from over 1200 languages and 1400 meanings. Our results thus suggest that universal principles shape the lexicons of natural languages. More broadly, they contribute to the growing body of evidence suggesting that languages evolve to strike a balance between competing functional and cognitive pressures.
%U https://aclanthology.org/2022.fieldmatters-1.5
%P 42-44
Markdown (Informal)
[The interaction between cognitive ease and informativeness shapes the lexicons of natural languages](https://aclanthology.org/2022.fieldmatters-1.5) (Brochhagen & Boleda, FieldMatters 2022)
ACL