用沟通效率解释词语如何组合，揭示语言演化背后的理性选择。
Rational Communication Shapes Morphological Composition
- 基于说话者成本与听者理解难度的权衡建模词素组合
- 实证显示真实词组在4323个案例中显著优于备选组合
- 适合对语言演化、认知模型感兴趣的读者
人类语言通过组合现有词素扩展词汇，而非随意创造形式。沟通效率在多个层面塑造词汇系统（Gibson et al., 2019），但词素组合——如构词或派生——很少被建模为历史语境下说话者在竞争性词素序列中的选择，导致为何某种组合被采纳而其他合理选项未被采用的问题未解。本文探讨在听者可恢复性与说话者生产成本之间的权衡是否能预测实际出现的词素组合。在理性言语行为（RSA）框架下，使用来自《历史美国英语语料库》（COHA）和《当代美国英语语料库》（COCA）的时间索引词典，我们发现：在1820–2019年间4323个自然出现的英语复合词与派生词中，实际使用的组合在同期可用的备选组合中系统性排名更高。整合语义信息量与生产成本的模型，在平均倒数排名（MRR）和前k准确率（Acc@k）上均优于仅语义或仅成本的基线模型，且随着候选集扩大，具语用意义的说话者模型（$S_1$）优势增强，表明仅凭语义无法确定词素选择。研究结果表明，词汇化反映了表达力与效率之间的沟通权衡，将理性沟通理论从话语层面拓展至词的内部结构。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Human languages expand vocabularies by combining existing morphemes rather than inventing arbitrary forms. Communicative efficiency shapes lexical systems at multiple levels (Gibson et al., 2019), yet morphological composition -- combining morphemes through compounding or affixation -- has rarely been modeled as a historically situated speaker choice among competing morpheme sequences, leaving unanswered why a language settles on one morpheme combination over other plausible alternatives. We ask whether a trade-off between listener recoverability and speaker production cost can predict attested compositions over contemporaneously available alternatives. Here we show, within the Rational Speech Act (RSA) framework (Frank & Goodman, 2012; Goodman & Frank, 2016) using a time-indexed lexicon constructed from Corpus of Historical American English (COHA) and Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), that across 4323 naturally occurring English compounds and derivations spanning 1820--2019, attested compositions are systematically ranked above unattested alternatives generated from contemporaneously available morphemes. Models integrating semantic informativeness with production cost outperform semantic-only and cost-only baselines on Mean Reciprocal Rank (MRR) and top-k accuracy (Acc@k), with the advantage of the Pragmatic Speaker model ($S_1$) over the semantic-only baseline growing as the candidate set expands, where meaning alone leaves morphological choice underdetermined. These findings suggest that lexicalization reflects a communicative trade-off between expressiveness and efficiency, extending rational accounts of communication from utterance-level choice to the internal structure of words.
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