[Lingtyp] tendencies of lexification

Fri Feb 7 00:53:35 UTC 2025

The correlation between degrees of frequency and degrees of differentiation has been amply observed, documented, and interpreted in many aspects of grammatical structure, such as that gender distinctions are generally more likely in singular pronouns and nouns, and that there are more kinds of oral consonants than nasal ones. That the same correlation also crops up outside language is suggested by a paper by Bernard Comrie and exemplified by Moravcsik & Wirth’s brief survey (both in the same 1986 volume).

First, people tend to perceive more distinctions in domains that are more common in their experience than in those that occur less frequently. Caucasians often note that they see more differences in Caucasian faces and hair styles than in African physiognomy (and, presumably, also in reverse), and we recognize more differences in dogs than, say, among lions. Spatial and temporal distance also makes a difference: we perceive more differences among trees when viewed from close by as opposed to when seen from a mountaintop, and present or recent experiences tend to preserve their distinct individuality as opposed to past events that may be remembered as types.
Second, some human artifacts – objects created by people - also show a similar correlation between frequency and diversity. There are more different kinds of commercially available birthday cards than of graduation cards, and there may be more variety in everyday food recipes than in festive ones.

Comrie, Bernard 1986. “Markedness, grammar, people, and the world.”
        In Markedness, edited by Fred R. Eckman & Edith A. Moravcsik &
        Jessica R. Wirth, pp. 85-106. New York and London: Plenum Press.

Moravcsik, Edith & Jessica Wirth 1986. “Introduction – an overview.”  pp. 1-11. (Same volume as above.)

Edith Moravcsik

________________________________
From: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of Martin Haspelmath via Lingtyp <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Sent: Thursday, February 6, 2025 12:41 AM
To: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Subject: [Lingtyp] tendencies of lexification

Many thanks to Temuulen Khishigsuren for pointing to this important line of work!

There is actually earlier work by Witold Mańczak (1966; 1970), who proposed a general law which I called "Mańczak's Law of Differentiation":

Frequently used linguistic elements are generally more differentiated.

I first became aware of this as a possible highly general law after reading Regier et al.'s 2016 paper about snow/ice differentiation (https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0151138): Languages whose speakers frequently talk about snow and ice lexify these two concepts, whereas circum-equatorial languages tend to say things like 'soft snice' and 'hard snice'. (Incidentally, Charles Kemp is one of the authors of this paper as well, so it seems to come from the same tradition as Khishigsuren's work.)

But what explains the association between high frequency of use and lexification (i.e. expression as an atomic morph)? In a 2024 talk in Poznań (https://zenodo.org/records/10958622), I elaborated on the idea that this has to do with the restriction on root length: Roots cannot be too long (not longer than 2-3 syllables), so when a meaning is rare, it cannot be expressed by a single root – in other words, it cannot be (easily) lexified.

It might be that this also partially explains the lexification patterns observed with antonymy by Koptjevskaja-Tamm et al. (2024) (https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/ling-2023-0140/html). The authors say (in §5):

"since the best examples of antonymic pairs ... in our questionnaire belong to the most frequently occurring property concepts, it is not surprising that both of their members tend to be lexicalized [= lexified, M.H.] as plain forms. From this point of view, we would therefore expect to encounter neg-derived expression across languages in antonym pairs for the less frequent concepts"

Best,

Martin

On 05.02.25 23:45, Temuulen Khishigsuren via Lingtyp wrote:
Dear Masha and all,

Thanks for sharing these thoughts about lexicalization. Along with collaborators I've recently developed a project testing the hypothesis that frequency influences lexicalization (ie the idea that Martin proposed). Our results suggest that frequency predicts lexicalization better than do other potential predictors such as concreteness.

An initial write up is here:

Khishigsuren et al. 2025. Usage frequency predicts lexicalization across languages (preprint: https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/fqdjv_v1 )

I'd love to consider "cognitive complexity" as an alternative predictor but am not sure how this might be operationalized. I do consider age of acquisition, which seems related to complexity, but these two variables are not quite the same. If anyone has thoughts about the best way to measure complexity, please let me know.

Best,
Temuulen

PhD candidate
Complex Human Data Hub
University of Melbourne

--
Martin Haspelmath
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Deutscher Platz 6
D-04103 Leipzig
https://www.eva.mpg.de/linguistic-and-cultural-evolution/staff/martin-haspelmath/
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