Communicative Efficiency or Iconic Learning: Do Acquisition and Communicative Pressures Interact to Shape Colour- Naming Systems?

Language evolution is driven by pressures for simplicity and informativity; however, the timescale on which these pressures operate is debated. Over several generations, learners’ biases for simple and informative systems can guide language evolution. Over repeated instances of dyadic communication,...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) Switzerland), 2022-10, Vol.24 (11), p.1542
Main Authors: Gyevnar, Balint, Dagan, Gautier, Haley, Coleman, Guo, Shangmin, Mollica, Frank
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Address forms
Bias
Color
colour-naming systems
Communicative competence
communicative efficiency
Dyadic interaction
Efficiency
Evolution
Experiments
Generations
information bottleneck
Interpersonal communication
Language acquisition
language evolution
Learning
Linguistics
Methods
Names
Naming
Onomasiology
Origin of language
Psychological aspects
Semantics
Verbal communication
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Summary:Language evolution is driven by pressures for simplicity and informativity; however, the timescale on which these pressures operate is debated. Over several generations, learners’ biases for simple and informative systems can guide language evolution. Over repeated instances of dyadic communication, the principle of least effort dictates that speakers should bias systems towards simplicity and listeners towards informativity, similarly guiding language evolution. At the same time, it has been argued that learners only provide a bias for simplicity and, thus, language users must provide a bias for informativity. To what extent do languages evolve during acquisition versus use? We address this question by formally defining and investigating the communicative efficiency of acquisition trajectories. We illustrate our approach using colour-naming systems, replicating a communicative efficiency model based on the information bottleneck problem, and an acquisition model based on self-organising maps. We find that to the extent that language is iconic, learning alone is sufficient to shape language evolution. Regarding colour-naming systems specifically, we find that incorporating learning biases into communicative efficiency accounts might explain how speakers and listeners trade off communicative effort.
ISSN:1099-4300
1099-4300
DOI:10.3390/e24111542