{"pk":25833,"title":"Semantic chaining and efficient communication: The case of container names","subtitle":null,"abstract":"Semantic categories in the world’s languages often reflect a\nhistorical process of chaining: A name for one idea is extended\nto a conceptually related idea, and from there on to other ideas,\nproducing a chain of concepts that all bear the same name.\nThe beginning and end points of such a chain might in prin-\nciple be conceptually rather dissimilar. There is also evidence\nsupporting a contrasting picture: Languages tend to support\nefficient, informative communication, often through semantic\ncategories in which all exemplars are similar. Here, we explore\nthis tension through computational analyses of existing cross-\nlanguage naming and sorting data from the domain of house-\nhold containers. We find: (1) formal evidence for historical se-\nmantic chaining, and (2) evidence that systems of categories in\nthis domain nonetheless support near-optimally efficient com-\nmunication. Our results suggest that semantic chaining may\nbe constrained by the functional need for efficient, informative\ncommunication.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[{"word":"semantic variation; artifact categories; semantic\nchaining; historical semantics; semantic universals; efficient\ncommunication"}],"section":"Papers","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5180p3q0","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Yang","middle_name":"","last_name":"Xu","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of California, Berkeley","department":""},{"first_name":"Terry","middle_name":"","last_name":"Regier","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of California, Berkeley","department":""},{"first_name":"Barbara","middle_name":"C","last_name":"Malt","name_suffix":"","institution":"Lehigh University","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2015-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/25833/galley/15457/download/"}]}