H. Tily
2011
Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science 2(3):323--335, 2011
Abstract Functionalist typologists have long argued that pressures associated with language usage influence the distribution of grammatical properties across the world's languages. Specifically, grammatical properties may be observed more often across languages ...
PNAS 108(9):3526-3529, 2011
We demonstrate a substantial improvement on one of the most celebrated empirical laws in the study of language, Zipf's 75-y-old theory that word length is primarily determined by frequency of use. In accord with rational theories of communication, we show across 10 languages that ...MORE ⇓
We demonstrate a substantial improvement on one of the most celebrated empirical laws in the study of language, Zipf's 75-y-old theory that word length is primarily determined by frequency of use. In accord with rational theories of communication, we show across 10 languages that average information content is a much better predictor of word length than frequency. This indicates that human lexicons are efficiently structured for communication by taking into account interword statistical dependencies. Lexical systems result from an optimization of communicative pressures, coding meanings efficiently given the complex statistics of natural language use.
Complementing quantitative typology with behavioral approaches: Evidence for typological universals
Linguistic Typology 15(2):497--508, 2011
Two main classes of theory have been advanced to explain correlations between linguistic features like those observed by Greenberg (1963). ARBITRARY CONSTRAINT theories argue that certain sets of features patterm together because they have a single underlying ...