2021/12/15 by Pedro Aceves, James A. Evans · 1 voice · 19 citations
Computer Science · Psychology · Social Sciences · #Artificial intelligence #Biology #Categorization, perception, and language #Communication #Computer science #Conversation #ENCODE #Focus (optics) #Human communication #Language and cultural evolution #Linguistics #Natural language processing #Psychology #Space (punctuation) #TRACE (psycholinguistics) #Variation (astronomy) #cs.CL
paper · pdf · doi:10.1038/s41562-024-01815-w
published in Nature Human Behaviour 8(4), 644-656 (Nature Portfolio)
arxiv published 2021/12/15 · arxiv updated 2023/09/29 · openalex publication_date 2024/02/16 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
Human languages vary widely in how they encode information within circumscribed semantic domains (e.g., time, space, color, human body parts and activities), but little is known about the global structure of semantic information and nothing about its relation to human communication. We first show that across a sample of ~1,000 languages, there is broad variation in how densely languages encode information into their words. Second, we show that this language information density is associated with a denser configuration of semantic information. Finally, we trace the relationship between language information density and patterns of communication, showing that informationally denser languages tend toward (1) faster communication, but (2) conceptually narrower conversations within which topics of conversation are discussed at greater depth. These results highlight an important source of variation across the human communicative channel, revealing that the structure of language shapes the nature and texture of human engagement, with consequences for human behavior across levels of society.