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Word Forms Reflect Trade‐Offs Between Speaker Effort and Robust Listener Recognition.

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Title: Word Forms Reflect Trade‐Offs Between Speaker Effort and Robust Listener Recognition.
Authors: Meylan, Stephan C.1 (AUTHOR) meylan.stephan@gmail.com, Griffiths, Thomas L.2 (AUTHOR)
Source: Cognitive Science. Jul2024, Vol. 48 Issue 7, p1-32. 32p.
Subject Terms: *Word recognition, *Word frequency, Natural languages, Speech, Universal language, Phoneme (Linguistics)
Abstract: How do cognitive pressures shape the lexicons of natural languages? Here, we reframe George Kingsley Zipf's proposed "law of abbreviation" within a more general framework that relates it to cognitive pressures that affect speakers and listeners. In this new framework, speakers' drive to reduce effort (Zipf's proposal) is counteracted by the need for low‐frequency words to have word forms that are sufficiently distinctive to allow for accurate recognition by listeners. To support this framework, we replicate and extend recent work using the prevalence of subword phonemic sequences (phonotactic probability) to measure speakers' production effort in place of Zipf's measure of length. Across languages and corpora, phonotactic probability is more strongly correlated with word frequency than word length. We also show this measure of ease of speech production (phonotactic probability) is strongly correlated with a measure of perceptual difficulty that indexes the degree of competition from alternative interpretations in word recognition. This is consistent with the claim that there must be trade‐offs between these two factors, and is inconsistent with a recent proposal that phonotactic probability facilitates both perception and production. To our knowledge, this is the first work to offer an explanation why long, phonotactically improbable word forms remain in the lexicons of natural languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Copyright of Cognitive Science is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)
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  Data: Word Forms Reflect Trade‐Offs Between Speaker Effort and Robust Listener Recognition.
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  Data: *<searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Word+recognition%22">Word recognition</searchLink><br />*<searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Word+frequency%22">Word frequency</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Natural+languages%22">Natural languages</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Speech%22">Speech</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Universal+language%22">Universal language</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Phoneme+%28Linguistics%29%22">Phoneme (Linguistics)</searchLink>
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  Data: How do cognitive pressures shape the lexicons of natural languages? Here, we reframe George Kingsley Zipf's proposed "law of abbreviation" within a more general framework that relates it to cognitive pressures that affect speakers and listeners. In this new framework, speakers' drive to reduce effort (Zipf's proposal) is counteracted by the need for low‐frequency words to have word forms that are sufficiently distinctive to allow for accurate recognition by listeners. To support this framework, we replicate and extend recent work using the prevalence of subword phonemic sequences (phonotactic probability) to measure speakers' production effort in place of Zipf's measure of length. Across languages and corpora, phonotactic probability is more strongly correlated with word frequency than word length. We also show this measure of ease of speech production (phonotactic probability) is strongly correlated with a measure of perceptual difficulty that indexes the degree of competition from alternative interpretations in word recognition. This is consistent with the claim that there must be trade‐offs between these two factors, and is inconsistent with a recent proposal that phonotactic probability facilitates both perception and production. To our knowledge, this is the first work to offer an explanation why long, phonotactically improbable word forms remain in the lexicons of natural languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
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  Data: <i>Copyright of Cognitive Science is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract.</i> (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)
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              Text: Jul2024
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