Finding Concept-specific Biases in Form–Meaning Associations (2021)

Abstract: This work presents an information-theoretic operationalisation of cross-linguistic non-arbitrariness. It is not a new idea that there are small, cross-linguistic associations between the forms and meanings of words. For instance, it has been claimed (Blasi et al., 2016) that the word for “tongue” is more likely than chance to contain the phone [l]. By controlling for the influence of language family and geographic proximity within a very large concept-aligned, cross-lingual lexicon, we extend methods previously used to detect within language non-arbitrariness (Pimentel et al., 2019) to measure cross-linguistic associations. We find that there is a significant effect of non-arbitrariness, but it is unsurprisingly small (less than 0.5% on average according to our information-theoretic estimate). We also provide a concept-level analysis which shows that a quarter of the concepts considered in our work exhibit a significant level of cross-linguistic non-arbitrariness. In sum, the paper provides new methods to detect cross-linguistic associations at scale, and confirms their effects are minor.

## introduction the arbitrariness of the sign, i.e. the principle that a word's form is unrelated to what it denotes, was one of the cornerstones in the structuralist revolution in linguistics @xcite . while languages do seem to adhere to the principle to a large extent, researchers have repeatedly uncovered evidence that there are preferences in form-meaning matches @xcite . indeed, the notion that these small, but systematic, form-meaning relations hold across the world's languages has become a mainstream topic of research in the last couple of decades. 1 1 see §2 below for a brief literature review and @xcite for a more comprehensive one. ## non-arbitrary form-meaning associations several studies have looked at non-arbitrary patterns in languages, be it systematicity @xcite @xcite or iconicity @xcite . with respect to crosslinguistic non-arbitrariness specifically, the hypothesised sources of form-meaning associations range from the fact that humans are endowed with the same neurocognitive architecture @xcite to their encountering similar experiences within the world @xcite . while global non-arbitrary form-meaning associations have been hypothesised to exist at different levels of linguistic description @xcite , by far the component of language that has received the most attention in this respect is the lexicon. a few circumstances facilitate this type of research in contrast to other domains of grammar. for instance, the space of possible words that could be used in a given language to refer to an arbitrary referent is large, whereas the relative canonical order of a verb with respect to its object complement is substantially smaller (which renders cross-linguistic similarities less informative than in the first case). additionally, the sheer amount of data available in the form of wordlists exceeds other types of linguistic data for the languages of the world. as a consequence, some of the largest evaluations of non-arbitrary form-meaning associations involve systematic wordlists with comparable referents across languages @xcite @xcite @xcite . most of these studies were focused on the regular association between phonemic or phonetic units with meaning, occasionally controlling for other potential sources of form-meaning association such as phonotactics or word length @xcite . while useful, the estimates emerging from this type of study can be regarded as lower bounds to the total amount of non-arbitrary associations found in the vocabulary. recent efforts have resulted in datasets with thousands of languages @xcite , with which linguists can look for universal statistical patterns @xcite . these studies, though, only looked at the presence (or not) of individual phones in words, not accounting for their connections. our methods rely on neural phonotactic models, similar to those used by @xcite , thus capturing a broader range of potential correspondences. ## data an exceptional resource with substantial crosslinguistic representation is provided in the automated similarity judgment program, better known by its acronym asjp @xcite . asjp is a collection of basic vocabulary wordlists, i.e. lists of words with referents that are expected to be widely attested across human societies. it involves body parts, some colour terms, lower numerals, general properties (such as big or round), and flora and fauna that are usually found in places where humans live (e.g. trees and dogs). the individual words in asjp are transcribed by field linguists in a specific phonetic annotation scheme that involves 41 symbols, chosen in order to maximise cross-linguistic utility by merging rare phones with similar phonetic features within the same category. these wordlists are assembled with the purpose of studying the history of languages-following the tradition established by @xcite -under the principles of the comparative method. asjp has gathered, in its latest iterations, data for close to 3 /4 of the world's languages, which makes it an unparalleled resource for evaluating form-meaning associations across spoken languages. furthermore, the vocabulary in its wordlists was chosen as so to be resistant to borrowings-making it especially interesting for our purposes of finding universal form-meaning biases. we leave out pidgin and creole data, 4 as defined by the world atlas of language structures @xcite , since they are ambiguous with relation to their genealogical affiliation. we also omit constructed and fake languages (e.g. esperanto and taensa). this leaves us 9148 doculects (or wordlists) from 5189 languages. 5 form-meaning associations have been studied in earlier versions of this dataset. firstly, @xcite studied the average form across different concepts in asjp, and found a number of tentative patterns pointing to non-arbitrariness. yet the lack of historical and statistical controls compromised the nature of such patterns: form-meaning associations could be due to widespread linguistic contact (e.g. the word for dog, @xcite or to its fortuitous presence in large families. @xcite , however, provide a conservative evaluation of individual form-meaning associations by imposing a restrictive set of conditions. they looked for associations that were present in a minimum number of continents and language families. this resulted in a sizable number of non-arbitrary 4 pidgins are believed to rely particularly on iconicity due to their smaller degree of lexicalisation; this reliance then diminishes as it morphs into a creole @xcite . future work could expand the methods here to study this phenomenon. data disclaimer. as mentioned above, asjp gathers lists of wordforms that are expected to be present across most human societies and their corresponding language(s). while this guarantees a fair coverage in our study, it limits the scope of our conclusions to those concepts present herein. ## conclusion in this paper we have provided a holistic assessment of form-meaning associations involving words found in the basic vocabulary in a large number of languages. in agreement with previous findings, we find that on average the meaning does not contribute substantially to the form of the words, but instead the most consistent associations were restricted to a specific subset of all of the words analysed. we find a list of 26 concepts (out of the 100 analysed) with statistically significant form-meaning associations-suggesting that crosslinguistic non-arbitrariness is not a rare exception. finally, we also find a set of concept-phone pairs with a consistently positive relationship across the four analysed macroareas.