Least effort and the origins of scaling in human language Export

@article{Cancho_PNAS03, abstract = {10.1073/pnas.0335980100 The emergence of a complex language is one of the fundamental events of human evolution, and several remarkable features suggest the presence of fundamental principles of organization. These principles seem to be common to all languages. The best known is the so-called Zipf's law, which states that the frequency of a word decays as a (universal) power law of its rank. The possible origins of this law have been controversial, and its meaningfulness is still an open question. In this article, the early hypothesis of Zipf of a principle of least effort for explaining the law is shown to be sound. Simultaneous minimization in the effort of both hearer and speaker is formalized with a simple optimization process operating on a binary matrix of signal\^{a}€“object associations. Zipf's law is found in the transition between referentially useless systems and indexical reference systems. Our finding strongly suggests that Zipf's law is a hallmark of symbolic reference and not a meaningless feature. The implications for the evolution of language are discussed. We explain how language evolution can take advantage of a communicative phase transition.}, author = {Cancho, Ramon F. and Sol\~{A}{\copyright}, Ricard V.}, citeulike-article-id = {5789311}, citeulike-linkout-0 = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0335980100}, citeulike-linkout-1 = {http://www.pnas.org/content/100/3/788.abstract}, citeulike-linkout-2 = {http://www.pnas.org/content/100/3/788.full.pdf}, citeulike-linkout-3 = {http://view.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12540826}, citeulike-linkout-4 = {http://www.hubmed.org/display.cgi?uids=12540826}, day = {4}, doi = {10.1073/pnas.0335980100}, journal = {Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America}, keywords = {experimental, language, scaling, theory}, month = {February}, number = {3}, pages = {788--791}, posted-at = {2009-10-29 11:00:43}, priority = {2}, title = {Least effort and the origins of scaling in human language}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0335980100}, volume = {100}, year = {2003} }

TY - JOUR ID - Cancho_PNAS03 L3 - citeulike-article-id:5789311 N2 - 10.1073/pnas.0335980100 The emergence of a complex language is one of the fundamental events of human evolution, and several remarkable features suggest the presence of fundamental principles of organization. These principles seem to be common to all languages. The best known is the so-called Zipf's law, which states that the frequency of a word decays as a (universal) power law of its rank. The possible origins of this law have been controversial, and its meaningfulness is still an open question. In this article, the early hypothesis of Zipf of a principle of least effort for explaining the law is shown to be sound. Simultaneous minimization in the effort of both hearer and speaker is formalized with a simple optimization process operating on a binary matrix of signal–object associations. Zipf's law is found in the transition between referentially useless systems and indexical reference systems. Our finding strongly suggests that Zipf's law is a hallmark of symbolic reference and not a meaningless feature. The implications for the evolution of language are discussed. We explain how language evolution can take advantage of a communicative phase transition. IS - 3 JF - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America EP - 791 TI - Least effort and the origins of scaling in human language VL - 100 SP - 788 KW - experimental KW - language KW - scaling KW - theory AU - Cancho, Ramon AU - Solé, Ricard PY - 2003/02/04/ UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0335980100 ER -