Word reuse and combination support efficient communication of emerging concepts

What is it about?

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 non-literal counterparts. These results suggest that reuse and combination are both consistent with a unified account of lexicalization grounded in the theory of efficient communication.

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Photo by Mick Haupt on Unsplash

Photo by Mick Haupt on Unsplash

Why is it important?

A primary function of the lexicon is to encode novel concepts and ideas as they emerge over time. Word reuse and combination are two common ways for lexicalizing novel concepts, but prior studies have treated these strategies separately. We offer a unified account proposing that both strategies are constrained by a fundamental tradeoff between competing communicative needs: the need for minimizing word length, and the need for maximizing informativeness. We analyze cases of reuse and combination in English, French and Finnish as they emerged over the past century and find that both strategies efficiently balance between these competing needs. Our work offers a formal account of the evolution of the lexicon through the lens of efficient communication.