Recursive Numeral Systems Optimize the Trade‐off Between Lexicon Size and Average Morphosyntactic Complexity
Milica Denić,
Jakub Szymanik
Abstract:Human languages vary in terms of which meanings they lexicalize, but this variation is constrained. It has been argued that languages are under two competing pressures: the pressure to be simple (e.g., to have a small lexicon) and to allow for informative (i.e., precise) communication, and that which meanings get lexicalized may be explained by languages finding a good way to trade off between these two pressures. However, in certain semantic domains, languages can reach very high levels of informativeness eve… Show more
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