Word lengths are optimized for efficient communication

We demonstrate a substantial improvement on one of the most celebrated empirical laws in the study of language, Zipf's 75-y-old theory that word length is primarily determined by frequency of use. In accord with rational theories of communication, we show across 10 languages that average inform...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS 2011-03, Vol.108 (9), p.3526-3529
Main Authors: Piantadosi, Steven T, Tily, Harry, Gibson, Edward
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Cognition
Communication
Correlations
Datasets
Humans
Information content
Information processing
Language
Language comprehension
Languages
Linguistics
Models, Statistical
Optimization
Search engines
Social Sciences
Syntactics
Theory
Verbal communication
Words
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:We demonstrate a substantial improvement on one of the most celebrated empirical laws in the study of language, Zipf's 75-y-old theory that word length is primarily determined by frequency of use. In accord with rational theories of communication, we show across 10 languages that average information content is a much better predictor of word length than frequency. This indicates that human lexicons are efficiently structured for communication by taking into account interword statistical dependencies. Lexical systems result from an optimization of communicative pressures, coding meanings efficiently given the complex statistics of natural language use.
ISSN:0027-8424
1091-6490
DOI:10.1073/pnas.1012551108