On the Optimality of Kinship Naming: an Information-theoretic Approach

Phong Le; Mees Lindeman; Raquel G. Alhama

On the Optimality of Kinship Naming: an Information-theoretic Approach

Phong Le, Mees Lindeman, Raquel G. Alhama

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Abstract

The structure of naming systems in natural languages hinges on a trade-off between high informativeness and low complexity. Focusing on the domain of kinship naming, we analyze such trade-off while addressing simplifying assumptions of prior work, namely: (i) universal communicative need across languages, and (ii) optimal listeners. To that aim, we collect data from four different languages, and analyze how different communicative needs and variations in the listener model influence the informativeness–complexity trade-off. Adopting a referential game setup from emergent communication, we further show that trade-off optimality is not only theoretically achievable but also emerges empirically in learned communication systems.

Anthology ID:: 2026.emnlp-main.159
Volume:: Proceedings of the 2026 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing
Month:: October
Year:: 2026
Address:: Budapest, Hungary
Editors:: Hung-Yi Lee, Sunipa Dev, Jessy Li, Desmond Elliott
Venue:: EMNLP
SIG:: SIGDAT
Publisher:: Association for Computational Linguistics
Note:
Pages:: 3654–3667
Language:
URL:: https://aclanthology.org/2026.emnlp-main.159/
DOI:
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):: Phong Le, Mees Lindeman, and Raquel G. Alhama. 2026. On the Optimality of Kinship Naming: an Information-theoretic Approach. In Proceedings of the 2026 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing, pages 3654–3667, Budapest, Hungary. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):: On the Optimality of Kinship Naming: an Information-theoretic Approach (Le et al., EMNLP 2026)
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PDF:: https://aclanthology.org/2026.emnlp-main.159.pdf

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@inproceedings{le-etal-2026-optimality,
    title = "On the Optimality of Kinship Naming: an Information-theoretic Approach",
    author = "Le, Phong  and
      Lindeman, Mees  and
      Alhama, Raquel G.",
    editor = "Lee, Hung-Yi  and
      Dev, Sunipa  and
      Li, Jessy  and
      Elliott, Desmond",
    booktitle = "Proceedings of the 2026 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing",
    month = oct,
    year = "2026",
    address = "Budapest, Hungary",
    publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
    url = "https://aclanthology.org/2026.emnlp-main.159/",
    pages = "3654--3667",
    ISBN = "979-8-89176-459-0",
    abstract = "The structure of naming systems in natural languages hinges on a trade-off between high informativeness and low complexity. Focusing on the domain of kinship naming, we analyze such trade-off while addressing simplifying assumptions of prior work, namely: (i) universal communicative need across languages, and (ii) optimal listeners. To that aim, we collect data from four different languages, and analyze how different communicative needs and variations in the listener model influence the informativeness{--}complexity trade-off. Adopting a referential game setup from emergent communication, we further show that trade-off optimality is not only theoretically achievable but also emerges empirically in learned communication systems."
}

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%0 Conference Proceedings
%T On the Optimality of Kinship Naming: an Information-theoretic Approach
%A Le, Phong
%A Lindeman, Mees
%A Alhama, Raquel G.
%Y Lee, Hung-Yi
%Y Dev, Sunipa
%Y Li, Jessy
%Y Elliott, Desmond
%S Proceedings of the 2026 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing
%D 2026
%8 October
%I Association for Computational Linguistics
%C Budapest, Hungary
%@ 979-8-89176-459-0
%F le-etal-2026-optimality
%X The structure of naming systems in natural languages hinges on a trade-off between high informativeness and low complexity. Focusing on the domain of kinship naming, we analyze such trade-off while addressing simplifying assumptions of prior work, namely: (i) universal communicative need across languages, and (ii) optimal listeners. To that aim, we collect data from four different languages, and analyze how different communicative needs and variations in the listener model influence the informativeness–complexity trade-off. Adopting a referential game setup from emergent communication, we further show that trade-off optimality is not only theoretically achievable but also emerges empirically in learned communication systems.
%U https://aclanthology.org/2026.emnlp-main.159/
%P 3654-3667

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Markdown (Informal)

[On the Optimality of Kinship Naming: an Information-theoretic Approach](https://aclanthology.org/2026.emnlp-main.159/) (Le et al., EMNLP 2026)

On the Optimality of Kinship Naming: an Information-theoretic Approach (Le et al., EMNLP 2026)

ACL

Phong Le, Mees Lindeman, and Raquel G. Alhama. 2026. On the Optimality of Kinship Naming: an Information-theoretic Approach. In Proceedings of the 2026 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing, pages 3654–3667, Budapest, Hungary. Association for Computational Linguistics.