Language evolution seminar

Speaker: Frank Mollica (University of Edinburgh)

Title: The forms and meanings of grammatical markers support efficient communication

Abstract: Functionalist accounts of language suggest that forms are paired with meanings in ways that support efficient communication. Previous work on grammatical marking suggests that word forms have lengths that enable efficient production, and previous work on the semantic typology of the lexicon suggests that word meanings represent efficient partitions of semantic space. Here we present an integrated information-theoretic framework that captures how communicative pressures influence both form and meaning. We apply the framework to the grammatical features of number, tense, and evidentiality, and show that in all three cases the framework explains both which systems of feature values are attested across languages and the relative lengths of the forms for those feature values.

Contact

Seminars are organised by the Centre for Language Evolution

Henry Conklin

Centre for Language Evolution