Department of Computer Science, Cognitive Science Program, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON M5S 3G8, Canada.
Computational Sciences Program, Minerva Schools at KGI, San Francisco, CA 94103, USA.
Cognition. 2020 Aug;201:104280. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2020.104280. Epub 2020 May 19.
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.
在自然语言中，多个意义通常共享一个单词形式，这种现象被称为同形异义词。一些意义在语言之间的同形异义词比其他意义更频繁，但这种变化的来源尚不清楚。我们提出，同形异义词的频率在语言之间的变化不是任意的，反映了认知经济的一般原则：在语言之间更频繁地同形异义词是那些需要较少认知努力来关联的意义。为了评估我们的建议，我们从大约 250 种语言中检查了不同频率的同形异义词模式。我们根据从大规模心理和语言资源中得出的概念相关性的独立测量来预测这些同形异义词数据。我们的结果表明，在这些语言中更频繁地同形异义词的意义往往更强烈地被英语使用者所关联，这表明概念联想性为词汇发展提供了一个重要的约束。我们的工作通过将同形异义词的跨语言规律建立在人类认知的基本原则上，扩展了多义词和词义演变的研究。
