When: Wednesday 03/06/2026, 12:00 - 13:00
Where: 52.217, UPF (Poblenou campus)

Abstract:
In this talk, I propose a new explanation of universal limits on lexification richness. In a range of different domains, it has been observed that more frequently needed meanings tend to be expressed in a more differentiated way. For example, close kin are more lexically differentiated than distant kin (e.g. brother/sister vs. cousin), modes of putting are more richly lexified than modes of taking (e.g. German setzen/stellen/legen vs. nehmen), and snow and ice are expressed by more different words in cold regions (see Khishigsuren et al. 2025). 

These limits on differential lexification have been explained with respect to a trade-off between informativeness (for the addressee) and complexity (for the speaker) (e.g. Kemp et al. 2018). However, “system complexity” does not seem to be a relevant processing bottleneck, and I will argue that the cost incurred by speakers primarily concerns articulation: While hearers want messages to be clear (or informative), speakers want them to be short (or easy to articulate). And since roots cannot be too long (cf. the “Root Length Constraint” first observed in Haspelmath 2023), this means that only highly frequent meanings can be expressed by roots (given the Zipfian efficiency principle). 

That frequency leads to greater differentiation was already observed by Mańczak (1970), but I argue that this is best explained by root shortness: If a meaning is rare, it must be expressed by a long form, and if the form needs three or four syllables, it must be a composite form (e.g. “male cousin”, contrasting with “sister”). I will speculate that this has not been noted before because researchers thought of the lexicon as consisting of “words”, whereas it actually consists of a large number of diverse composite expressions in addition to roots (Haspelmath 2024), where “words” have no particular status.
 

References
* Haspelmath, Martin. 2023. Coexpression and synexpression patterns across languages: Comparative concepts and possible explanations. Frontiers in Psychology 14. (doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1236853)
* Haspelmath, Martin. 2024. Four kinds of lexical items: Words, lexemes, inventorial items, and mental items. Lexique: Revue en Sciences du Langage (34). 71–95. (doi:10.54563/lexique.1737)
* Khishigsuren, Temuulen & Mollica, Francis & Vylomova, Ekaterina & Kemp, Charles. 2025. Usage frequency predicts lexicalization across languages. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society 47(0). (https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1m3870tq)
* Kemp, Charles & Xu, Yang & Regier, Terry. 2018. Semantic typology and efficient communication. Annual Review of Linguistics 4(1). 109–128. (doi:10.1146/annurev-linguistics-011817-045406)
* Mańczak, Witold. 1970. Sur la théorie die catégories “marquées” et “non-marquées” de Greenberg. Linguistics 8(59). 29–36. (doi:10.1515/ling.1970.8.59.29).