用信息论解释语言语法为何全球趋同，发现高效处理优先于语义精确。
Principles of semantic and functional efficiency in grammatical patterning
- 将语义编码与语法预测性统一为信息论目标，在认知限制下建模语法形成。
- 跨语言分析显示，语法更倾向提升处理效率而非精确表达语义。
- 适用于语言学、认知科学和自然语言处理研究者，尤其关注语言演化者。
数量、性别等语法特征在人类语言中承担双重功能：既编码显著的语义属性（如数量、有生性），又通过语法一致关系预判词序，降低句子处理成本。尽管各类语言的语法组织模式高度一致，且普遍根植于语义基础，这一现象虽被广泛证实，却仍缺乏理论解释。本文将语义编码与基于一致性的可预测性统一为单一的信息论目标，在认知约束下解释普遍语法模式的成因。分析表明，语法结构可溯源至感知属性；对多种语言样本的测量显示，语法设计优先满足功能性目标，即促进语言处理效率，而非追求语义编码的完整性。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Grammatical features such as number and gender serve two central functions in human languages. While they encode salient semantic attributes like numerosity and animacy, they also offload sentence processing cost by predictably linking words together via grammatical agreement. Grammars exhibit consistent organizational patterns across diverse languages, invariably rooted in a semantic foundation-a widely confirmed but still theoretically unexplained phenomenon. To explain the basis of universal grammatical patterns, we unify two fundamental properties of grammar, semantic encoding and agreement-based predictability, into a single information-theoretic objective under cognitive constraints, accounting for variable communicative need. Our analyses reveal that grammatical organization provably inherits from perceptual attributes, and our measurements on a diverse language sample show that grammars prioritize functional goals, promoting efficient language processing over semantic encoding.
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