Word reuse and combination support efficient communication of emerging concepts

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Xu, Aotao; Kemp, Charles; Frermann, Lea; Xu, Yang
• 署名单位: University of Toronto; University of Melbourne; University of Melbourne; University of Toronto
• 刊物名称: PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0027-10868
• DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2406971121
• 发表日期: 2024-11-12
• 关键词: noun compounds; EVOLUTION; language; acquisition; adjectives; semantics; meanings; LAW

摘要

A key function of the lexicon is to express novel concepts as they emerge over time through a process known as lexicalization. The most common lexicalization strategies are the reuse and combination of existing words, but they have typically been studied separately in the areas of word meaning extension and word formation. Here, we offer an information-theoretic account of how both strategies are constrained by a fundamental tradeoff between competing communicative pressures: Word reuse tends to preserve the average length of word forms at the cost of less precision, while word combination tends to produce more informative words at the expense of greater word length. We test our proposal against a large dataset of reuse items and compounds that appeared in English, French, and Finnish over the past century. We find that these historically emerging items achieve higher levels of communicative efficiency than hypothetical ways of constructing the lexicon, and both literal reuse items and compounds tend to be more efficient than their nonliteral counterparts. These results suggest that reuse and combination are both consistent with a unified account of lexicalization grounded in the theory of efficient communication.