Communicative Efficiency or Iconic Learning: Do acquisition and communicative pressures interact to shape colour-naming systems?

Balint Gyevnar*, Gautier Dagan, Coleman Haley, Shangmin Guo, Francis Mollica

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract / Description of output

Language evolution is driven by pressures for simplicity and informativity; however, the timescale on which these pressures operate is debated. Over several generations, learners' biases for simple and informative systems can guide language evolution. Over repeated instances of dyadic communication, the principle of least effort dictates that speakers should bias systems towards simplicity and listeners towards informativity, similarly guiding language evolution. At the same time, it has been argued that learners only provide a bias for simplicity and, thus, users must provide a bias for informativity. To what extent do languages evolve during acquisition versus use? Here, we address this question by formally defining and investigating the communicative efficiency of acquisition trajectories. We illustrate our approach using colour-naming systems, replicating the communicative efficiency model of Zaslavsky et al. (2018) and the acquisition model of Beekhuizen and Stevenson (2018). We find that, to the extent language is iconic, learning alone is sufficient to shape language evolution. Regarding colour-naming systems specifically, we find that incorporating learning biases into communicative efficiency accounts might explain how speakers and listeners trade off communicative effort.
Original languageEnglish
Article number1542
Number of pages27
JournalEntropy
Volume24
Issue number11
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 26 Oct 2022

Keywords / Materials (for Non-textual outputs)

  • colour-naming systems
  • communicative efficiency
  • language evolution
  • information-bottleneck

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