ERIC Number: EJ1050520
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2015-Jan
Pages: 15
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0364-0213
EISSN: N/A
Available Date: N/A
Word Meanings Evolve to Selectively Preserve Distinctions on Salient Dimensions
Silvey, Catriona; Kirby, Simon; Smith, Kenny
Cognitive Science, v39 n1 p212-226 Jan 2015
Words refer to objects in the world, but this correspondence is not one-to-one: Each word has a range of referents that share features on some dimensions but differ on others. This property of language is called underspecification. Parts of the lexicon have characteristic patterns of underspecification; for example, artifact nouns tend to specify shape, but not color, whereas substance nouns specify material but not shape. These regularities in the lexicon enable learners to generalize new words appropriately. How does the lexicon come to have these helpful regularities? We test the hypothesis that systematic backgrounding of some dimensions during learning and use causes language to gradually change, over repeated episodes of transmission, to produce a lexicon with strong patterns of underspecification across these less salient dimensions. This offers a cultural evolutionary mechanism linking individual word learning and generalization to the origin of regularities in the lexicon that help learners generalize words appropriately.
Descriptors: Definitions, Learning, Language Usage, Diachronic Linguistics, Generalization, Language
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: US Department of Health and Human Services
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