Related papers: Cognitive Limits Shape Language Statistics
Zipf (1935) posited that wordforms are optimized to minimize utterances' communicative costs. Under the assumption that cost is given by an utterance's length, he supported this claim by showing that words' lengths are inversely correlated…
The binary many-step Markov chain with the step-like memory function is considered as a model for the analysis of rank distributions of words in stochastic symbolic dynamical systems. We prove that the envelope curve for this distribution…
Languages are not created randomly but rather to communicate information. There is a strong association between languages and their underlying meanings, resulting in a sparse joint distribution that is heavily peaked according to their…
Time evolution of the cities and of the languages is considered in terms of multiplicative noise and fragmentation processes; where power law (Pareto-Zipf law) and slightly asymmetric log-normal (Gauss) distribution result for the size…
Learning is a distinctive feature of intelligent behaviour. High-throughput experimental data and Big Data promise to open new windows on complex systems such as cells, the brain or our societies. Yet, the puzzling success of Artificial…
We propose a stochastic model for the number of different words in a given database which incorporates the dependence on the database size and historical changes. The main feature of our model is the existence of two different classes of…
Humans communicate using systems of interconnected stimuli or concepts -- from language and music to literature and science -- yet it remains unclear how, if at all, the structure of these networks supports the communication of information.…
Human language can be described as a complex network of linked words. In such a treatment, each distinct word in language is a vertex of this web, and neighboring words in sentences are connected by edges. It was recently found (Ferrer and…
Well-established cognitive models coming from anthropology have shown that, due to the cognitive constraints that limit our "bandwidth" for social interactions, humans organize their social relations according to a regular structure. In…
Zipf's law is well known in linguistics: the frequency of a word is inversely proportional to its rank. This is a special case of a more general power law, a common phenomenon in many kinds of real-world statistical data. Here, it is shown…
Recent approaches to human concept learning have successfully combined the power of symbolic, infinitely productive rule systems and statistical learning to explain our ability to learn new concepts from just a few examples. The aim of most…
The science of cities seeks to understand and explain regularities observed in the world's major urban systems. Modelling the population evolution of cities is at the core of this science and of all urban studies. Quantitatively, the most…
We adopt an evolutionary view on language change in which cognitive factors (in addition to social ones) affect the fitness of words and their success in the linguistic ecosystem. Specifically, we propose a variety of psycholinguistic…
How do words change their meaning? Although semantic evolution is driven by a variety of distinct factors, including linguistic, societal, and technological ones, we find that there is one law that holds universally across five major…
As a core element of culture, images transform perception into structured representations and undergo evolution similar to natural languages. Given that visual input accounts for 60% of human sensory experience, it is natural to ask whether…
A fundamental concern in linguistics has been to understand how languages change, such as in relation to word order. Since the order of words in a sentence (i.e. the relative placement of Subject, Object, and Verb) is readily identifiable…
We show that statistical criticality, i.e. the occurrence of power law frequency distributions, arises in samples that are maximally informative about the underlying generating process. In order to reach this conclusion, we first identify…
Linguistic norms emerge in human communities because people imitate each other. A shared linguistic system provides people with the benefits of shared knowledge and coordinated planning. Once norms are in place, why would they ever change?…
Although information theoretic characterizations of human communication have become increasingly popular in linguistics, to date they have largely involved grafting probabilistic constructs onto older ideas about grammar. Similarities…
In this paper we quantify the consistency of word usage in written texts represented by complex networks, where words were taken as nodes, by measuring the degree of preservation of the node neighborhood.} Words were considered highly…