Dye, M., Milin, P. orcid.org/0000-0001-9708-7031, Futrell, R. et al. (1 more author) (2017) Cute little puppies and nice cold beers : an information theoretic analysis of prenominal adjectives. In: CogSci 2017 Proceedings. CogSci 2017, 39th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 26-29 Jul 2017, London, UK. Cognitive Science Society , pp. 319-324. ISBN 9780991196760
Abstract
A central goal of typological research is to characterize linguistic features in terms of both their functional role and their fit to social and cognitive systems. One longstanding puzzle concerns why certain languages employ grammatical gender. In an information theoretic analysis of German noun classification, Dye et al. (2017) enumerated a number of important processing advantages gender confers. Yet this raises a further puzzle: If gender systems are so beneficial to processing, what does this mean for languages without them? Here, we compare the communicative function of gender marking in German (a deterministic system) to that of prenominal adjectives in English (a probabilistic one), finding that despite their differences, both systems act to efficiently smooth information over discourse, making nouns more equally predictable in context. We examine why evolutionary pressures may favor one solution over another, and discuss the implications for compositional accounts of meaning and Gricean principles of communication.
Metadata
Item Type: | Proceedings Paper |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2017 Cognitive Science Society. |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Department of Journalism Studies (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 25 May 2017 14:13 |
Last Modified: | 23 Jun 2020 10:42 |
Published Version: | https://cogsci.mindmodeling.org/2017/papers/0070/i... |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Cognitive Science Society |
Refereed: | Yes |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:116881 |