Language evolution seminar

Speaker: Vlad Nedelcu (University of Edinburgh)

Title: Degree of heterogeneity across the contexts of language users could mediate the cognitive-communicative trade-off in semantic categorization

Abstract: One of the central issues for lexical typologists is identifying the principles that govern how different lexical meanings can be grouped together into semantic categories so as to be expressed by the same lexical item. It has been argued that patterns of cross-linguistic variation in the categories labelled by individual words are a result of a trade-off between cognitive pressures (so as to be simple to learn and use) and communicative pressures (so as to be efficient in communication). However, the question of what exact mechanisms control this trade-off has been left largely unanswered. In this talk, I will argue that one important factor could be the extent to which referential contexts at the level of local interactions are similar or different across users of a category system. To explore this hypothesis, I will present a hierarchical Bayesian model for communication in a multidimensional meaning space, in which agents actively consider spatial similarity relations during communication. Our model predicts that less variability in contexts across partners would induce categories with a lower communicative cost but a more idiosyncratic structure, while more variable contexts across partners would induce more convex category systems and with a lower cognitive cost.

Contact

Seminars are organised by the Centre for Language Evolution

• Elizabeth Pankratz

• Centre for Language Evolution