Conceptual Similarity and Communicative Need Shape Colexification: An Experimental Study

Abstract

Colexification refers to the phenomenon of multiple meanings sharing one word in a language. Cross‐linguistic lexification patterns have been shown to be largely predictable, as similar concepts are often colexified. We test a recent claim that, beyond this general tendency, communicative needs play an important role in shaping colexification patterns. We approach this question by means of a series of human experiments, using an artificial language communication game paradigm. Our results across four experiments match the previous cross‐linguistic findings: all other things being equal, speakers do prefer to colexify similar concepts. However, we also find evidence supporting the communicative need hypothesis: when faced with a frequent need to distinguish similar pairs of meanings, speakadjust their colexification preferences to maintain communicative efficiency and avoid colexifying those similar meanings which need to be distinguished in communication. This research provides further evidence to support the argument that languages are shaped by the needs and preferences of their speakers.

From language development to language evolution: A unified view of human lexical creativity

“…These pressures are independent of child overextension and suggest that phenomena such as colexification are partially shaped by a need to distinguish meanings that appear in similar contexts. This may explain why child overextensions such as “baby” for “adult” or “bus” for “train” are rarely expressed by a single word across languages: Doing so may cause ambiguity that is hard to resolve even in context ( 11 , 44 , 45 ). A second explanation, which we suggest to be more likely, is an indirect relationship, in which products of lexical creativity stem from a common latent source of multifaceted semantic knowledge (Fig.…”

“…Some of these meanings are encountered relatively late in language acquisition, making them less likely to appear in overextension. Third, functional pressures toward efficient communication shape word meanings across languages (11,(41)(42)(43)(44). These pressures are independent of child overextension and suggest that phenomena such as colexification are partially shaped by a need to distinguish meanings that appear in similar contexts.…”

Evolving linguistic divergence on polarizing social media

“…Some divergence in a given language may be attributed to natural linguistic drift mechanisms or topical fluctuations (Blythe 2012;Croft 2000;Karjus et al 2020) taking different directions in groups with differing communicative needs (Karjus et al 2021;Kemp et al 2018), more so if they do not interact, and engage in different activities. Yet some lexical innovations and groupspecific usages may be actively selected for.…”

LEXpander: Applying colexification networks to automated lexicon expansion

“…Therefore, Ancient Greek colexifies the concepts of 'poison' and 'medicine'. Since its coinage, the concept of colexification has been related to semantic similarity (Franc ¸ois, 2008), that is concepts that are linked by colexification share semantic meaning (Karjus, Blythe, Kirby, Wang, & Smith, 2021;Xu, Duong, Malt, Malt, & Srinivasan, 2020).…”