Evolution of word meanings through metaphorical mapping: Systematicity over the past millennium.

Xu, Yang; Malt, Barbara C.; Srinivasan, Mahesh

doi:10.31234/osf.io/kzbwf

Cited by 13 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…Our proposal that more frequently colexified meanings should be more conceptually related is also consistent with recent evidence on how new word meanings enter lexicons over time (Ramiro et al, 2018;Xu et al, 2017). For example, Ramiro et al (2018) found that over the past 1,000 years, new meanings in English have much more often entered the lexicon by attaching to existing word forms than by creation of new forms.…”

Section: Figure 1 Illustration Of Colexification Across Languages Asupporting

confidence: 89%

“…Abstract concepts are often understood by reference to more concrete concepts (e.g., an argument as a war) (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980), and words that first arise with concrete senses often later gain an abstract one (Xu et al, 2017). We considered two versions of a metaphor-based model to take into account the possibility that colexification is driven by metaphorical tendency between concepts.…”

Section: And 5 Baselines Of Metaphoricitymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Conceptual Relations Predict Colexification across Languages

Xu¹,

dnk²,

Malt³

et al. 2020

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In natural language, multiple meanings often share a single word form, a phenomenon known as colexification. Some sets of meanings are more frequently colexified across languages than others, but the source of this variation is not well understood. We propose that cross-linguistic variation in colexification frequency is non-arbitrary and reflects a general principle of cognitive economy: More commonly colexified meanings across languages are those that require less cognitive effort to relate. To evaluate our proposal, we examine patterns of colexification of varying frequency from about 250 languages. We predict these colexification data based on independent measures of conceptual relatedness drawn from large-scale psychological and linguistic resources. Our results show that meanings that are more frequently colexified across these languages tend to be more strongly associated by speakers of English, suggesting that conceptual associativity provides an important constraint on the development of the lexicon. Our work extends research on polysemy and the evolution of word meanings by grounding cross-linguistic regularities in colexification in basic principles of human cognition.

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Section: Figure 1 Illustration Of Colexification Across Languages Asupporting

confidence: 89%

Section: And 5 Baselines Of Metaphoricitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Conceptual Relations Predict Colexification across Languages

Xu¹,

dnk²,

Malt³

et al. 2020

Preprint

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Supporting this idea, studies on the developing Nicaraguan sign language have shown that complex linguistic structure emerges over multiple cohorts of learners (Senghas, Kita, & Ozyurek, 2004), and work on pidgins has suggested that new child learners are required in order to develop recursion (Bickerton, 1984). Second, it affects the reasoning and predictions made about the structure of human lexicons over time: from understanding trends in metaphorical mappings (Xu, Malt, & Srinivasan, 2017) to measuring the entropy and informativity of words (Bentz, Alikaniotis, Cysouw, & Ferrer-i-Cancho, 2017). Going beyond language evolution and change, this conclusion has already influenced work on a wide range of human behaviors.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Compositional structure can emerge without generational transmission

2019

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Experimental work in the field of language evolution has shown that novel signal systems become more structured over time. In a recent paper, Kirby, Tamariz, Cornish, and Smith (2015) argued that compositional languages can emerge only when languages are transmitted across multiple generations. In the current paper, we show that compositional languages can emerge in a closed community within a single generation. We conducted a communication experiment in which we tested the emergence of linguistic structure in different micro-societies of four participants, who interacted in alternating dyads using an artificial language to refer to novel meanings. Importantly, the communication included two real-world aspects of language acquisition and use, which introduce compressibility pressures: (a) multiple interaction partners and (b) an expanding meaning space. Our results show that languages become significantly more structured over time, with participants converging on shared, stable, and compositional lexicons. These findings indicate that new learners are not necessary for the formation of linguistic structure within a community, and have implications for related fields such as developing sign languages and creoles.

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“…ref. 28). Our current work provides a starting point toward unlocking the algorithms that generate new word senses in lexical evolution.…”

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confidence: 99%

Algorithms in the historical emergence of word senses

Ramiro

Srinivasan

Malt

et al. 2018

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Human language relies on a finite lexicon to express a potentially infinite set of ideas. A key result of this tension is that words acquire novel senses over time. However, the cognitive processes that underlie the historical emergence of new word senses are poorly understood. Here, we present a computational framework that formalizes competing views of how new senses of a word might emerge by attaching to existing senses of the word. We test the ability of the models to predict the temporal order in which the senses of individual words have emerged, using an historical lexicon of English spanning the past millennium. Our findings suggest that word senses emerge in predictable ways, following an historical path that reflects cognitive efficiency, predominantly through a process of nearest-neighbor chaining. Our work contributes a formal account of the generative processes that underlie lexical evolution.

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Evolution of word meanings through metaphorical mapping: Systematicity over the past millennium.

Cited by 13 publications

References 17 publications

Conceptual Relations Predict Colexification across Languages

Conceptual Relations Predict Colexification across Languages

Compositional structure can emerge without generational transmission

Algorithms in the historical emergence of word senses

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