title: Word meanings evolve to selectively preserve distinctions on salient dimensions.
abstract: Words refer to objects in the world, but this correspondence is not one-to-one: Each word has a range of referents that share features on some dimensions but differ on others. This property of language is called underspecification. Parts of the lexicon have characteristic patterns of underspecification; for example, artifact nouns tend to specify shape, but not color, whereas substance nouns specify material but not shape. These regularities in the lexicon enable learners to generalize new words appropriately. How does the lexicon come to have these helpful regularities? We test the hypothesis that systematic backgrounding of some dimensions during learning and use causes language to gradually change, over repeated episodes of transmission, to produce a lexicon with strong patterns of underspecification across these less salient dimensions. This offers a cultural evolutionary mechanism linking individual word learning and generalization to the origin of regularities in the lexicon that help learners generalize words appropriately.
authors: School of Philosophy, Psychology, and Language Sciences, University of Edinburgh.
authors: Catriona
authors: C
authors: Silvey
authors: Simon
authors: S
authors: Kirby
authors: Kenny
authors: K
authors: Smith
mesh_terms: D003210:Concept Formation; D003469:Culture; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D007858:Learning; D008960:Models, Psychological; D014706:Verbal Learning; D014825:Vocabulary
keywords: Attentional learning; Cultural transmission; Iterated learning; Language and conceptualization; Language evolution; Word meaning