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{
    "pk": 26901,
    "title": "Language-users choose short words in predictive contextsin an artificial language task",
    "subtitle": null,
    "abstract": "Zipf (1935) observed that word length is inversely proportionalto word frequency in the lexicon. He hypothesised that thiscross-linguistically universal feature was due to the Principleof Least Effort: language-users align form-meaning mappingsin such a way that the lexicon is optimally coded for efficientinformation transfer. However, word frequency is not the onlyreliable predictor of word length: Piantadosi, Tily, and Gib-son (2011) show that a word’s predictability in context is infact more strongly correlated with word length than word fre-quency. Here, we present an artificial language learning studyaimed at investigating the mechanisms that could give rise tosuch a distribution at the level of the lexicon. We find thatparticipants are more likely to use an ambiguous short form inpredictive contexts, and distinct long forms in surprising con-texts, only when they are subject to the competing pressures tocommunicate accurately and efficiently. These results supportthe hypothesis that language-users are driven by a least-effortprinciple to restructure their input in order to align word lengthwith information content, and this mechanism could thereforeexplain the global pattern observed at the level of the lexicon.",
    "language": "eng",
    "license": {
        "name": "",
        "short_name": "",
        "text": null,
        "url": ""
    },
    "keywords": [
        {
            "word": "Information theory; Efficient communication; Ar-tificial language learning; Uniform Information Density"
        }
    ],
    "section": "Talks: Papers",
    "is_remote": true,
    "remote_url": "https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6cs26777",
    "frozenauthors": [
        {
            "first_name": "Jasmeen",
            "middle_name": "",
            "last_name": "Kanwal",
            "name_suffix": "",
            "institution": "University of Edinburgh",
            "department": ""
        },
        {
            "first_name": "Kenny",
            "middle_name": "",
            "last_name": "Smith",
            "name_suffix": "",
            "institution": "University of Edinburgh",
            "department": ""
        },
        {
            "first_name": "Jennifer",
            "middle_name": "",
            "last_name": "Culbertson",
            "name_suffix": "",
            "institution": "University of Edinburgh",
            "department": ""
        },
        {
            "first_name": "Simon",
            "middle_name": "",
            "last_name": "Kirby",
            "name_suffix": "",
            "institution": "University of Edinburgh",
            "department": ""
        }
    ],
    "date_submitted": null,
    "date_accepted": null,
    "date_published": "2017-01-01T18:00:00Z",
    "render_galley": null,
    "galleys": [
        {
            "label": "PDF",
            "type": "pdf",
            "path": "https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/26901/galley/16537/download/"
        }
    ]
}