Investigating theories of speaker choice in a classifier language - DSpace@MIT
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Why do speakers pick one grammatical form over another when both are "correct"? This MIT study digs into the hidden cognitive and social forces driving speaker choice in classifier languages.
Rational Speech Act TheoryOptimal Code TheoryCognitive LinguisticsInformation Theory
Theory Briefing
- MIT researchers investigate why speakers choose specific utterance structures when multiple grammatically valid options exist.
- The study focuses on classifier languages, where speakers must select from competing noun-categorization forms to convey the same meaning.
- Findings probe whether speaker choice is driven by cognitive efficiency, social signaling, or probabilistic language models.