The Origins of Arbitrariness in Language

Abstract

Human language exhibits mainly arbitrary relationships between the forms and meanings of words.Why would this be so?In this paper I argue that arbitrariness becomes necessary as the number of words increases.I also discuss the effectiveness of competitive learning for acquiring lexicons that are arbitrary in this sense.Finally, I consider some implications of this perspective for arbitrariness and iconicity in language acquisition. A Language Design TaskImagine you are inventing a language.It should associate signals ("forms") that can be produced and perceived by the users of the language with perceptual or motor categories ("meanings").Assume that both forms and meanings are patterns of values across sets of dimensions and that you have been given the form and meaning dimensions.Assume further that the specific design task includes a set of meaning categories that need to get reliably conveyed.That is, given a particular pattern across the meaning dimensions, if it belongs to one of the given set of categories, a user who knows the language should be able to assign a form to it, that is, an appropriate pattern across the set of form dimensions. Similarly, given a pattern across the form dimensions, if it belongs to one of the set of form categories that you have built into your language, a user who knows the language should be able to assign a meaning to it.Furthermore, the form assigned to an input meaning should be the "right" form; that is, the form that gets output should pass the comprehension test in the reverse direction.Providing this form to a user who knows the language should result in an output meaning that is at least closer to the original meaning than to any of the other meaning categories.In the same fashion, the meaning assigned to an input form should pass the production test in the reverse direction. 1Your language is not hard-wired into a user; it must be learned through a series of presentations.A presentation consists of a pairing of a form and a meaning selected randomly from the set of possible form-meaning pairs that are built into the language, with a small amount