{"pk":21578,"title":"Coordination, rather than pragmatics, shapes colexification when the pressure for efficiency is low.","subtitle":null,"abstract":"We investigate the phenomenon of colexification, where a sin-\ngle wordform is associated with multiple meanings. Previ-\nous research on colexification has primarily focused on em-\npirical studies of different properties of the meanings that de-\ntermine colexification, such as semantic similarity or meaning\nfrequency. Meanwhile, little attention was paid to the word-\nforms' properties, despite being the original approach advo-\ncated by Zipf. Our preregistered study examines whether word\nlength influences word choice for colexification using a novel\ndyadic communication game (N = 64) and a computational\nmodel grounded in the Rational Speech Act (RSA) framework.\nContrary to initial predictions, participants did not exhibit a\nstrong preference for efficient colexification (namely colexi-\nfying multiple concepts using short words, when long alter-\nnatives are available). The results align more closely with a\nsimpler coordination model, where dyads align on a function-\ning lexical convention with relatively little influence from the\nefficiency of that convention. Our study highlights the pos-\nsibility that colexification choices are strongly determined by\nthe pressure for coordination, with weaker influences from se-\nmantic similarity or meaning frequency. This is most likely\nexplained by weak pressure for efficiency in our experimental\ndesign.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[{"word":"Linguistics; Psychology; Pragmatics; Semantics; Agent-based Modeling; Computational Modeling; Computer-based experiment"}],"section":"Papers with Poster Presentation","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/05m6m011","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Alexey","middle_name":"","last_name":"Koshevoy","name_suffix":"","institution":"Université Aix-Marseille/CNRS","department":""},{"first_name":"Isabelle","middle_name":"","last_name":"Dautriche","name_suffix":"","institution":"Université Aix-Marseille/CNRS","department":""},{"first_name":"Olivier","middle_name":"","last_name":"Morin","name_suffix":"","institution":"PSL University","department":""},{"first_name":"Kenny","middle_name":"","last_name":"Smith","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of Edinburgh","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2024-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/21578/galley/11177/download/"},{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/21578/galley/21971/download/"}]}