报告

Gaps in the Lexicon Restrict Communication

Lilia Rissman

, Qiawen Liu, and Gary Lupyan

心理学系, University of Wisconsin–Madison, 麦迪逊, WI, 美国

关键词: 沟通, 语义学, 类别, lexicon, compositionality, Chinese

开放访问

杂志

抽象的

Across languages, words carve up the world of experience in different ways. 例如,
English lacks an equivalent to the Chinese superordinate noun tiáowèipǐn, which is loosely
translated as “ingredients used to season food while cooking.” Do such differences matter? A
conventional label may offer a uniquely effective way of communicating. 另一方面,
lexical gaps may be easily bridged by the compositional power of language. 毕竟, 最多
of the ideas we want to express do not map onto simple lexical forms. We conducted a
referential Director/Matcher communication task with adult speakers of Chinese and English.
Directors provided a clue that Matchers used to select words from a word grid. The three
target words corresponded to a superordinate term (例如, beverages) in either Chinese
or English but not both. We found that Matchers were more accurate at choosing the
target words when their language lexicalized the target category. This advantage was driven
entirely by the Directors’ use/non-use of the intended superordinate term. The presence of
a conventional superordinate had no measurable effect on speakers’ within- or between-
category similarity ratings. These results show that the ability to rely on a conventional term is
surprisingly important despite the flexibility languages offer to communicate about non-
lexicalized categories.

我

D
哦
w
n
哦
A
d
e
d

F
r
哦
米
H

t
t

p

:
/
/

d
我
r
e
C
t
.

米

我
t
.

/

e
d
你
哦
p
米

我
/

我

A
r
t
我
C
e
–
p
d

F
/

d
哦

我
/

我

/

/

.

1
0
1
1
6
2
哦
p
米
_
A
_
0
0
0
8
9
2
1
4
8
1
3
2
哦
p
米
_
A
_
0
0
0
8
9
p
d

.

/

我

F

乙
y
G
你
e
s
t

t

哦
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
米
乙
e
r
2
0
2
3

介绍

Two hallmarks of language are conventionality—a shared lexicon of form-meaning map-
pings, and compositionality—the ability to combine lexical units to create more complex
expressions. Speakers can choose more or less compositional strategies. Suppose you are
at a restaurant and want something to eat right away. You could suggest to your dining
companion that you order “appetizers,” or you could suggest ordering “something small
to eat before the main course.” The first strategy relies on the lexical convention appetizer
(a category is “lexicalized” if it is expressed through a single, non-compositional lexical
单元). The second strategy is a more spontaneously generated expression of your wish (一些-
times called an ad-hoc description; 巴尔萨卢, 1983). But sometimes the first strategy is not
available because the conventional term simply does not exist. 例如, the English
word seafood includes both fish and shellfish. The closest Spanish equivalent, mariscos, 是
more accurately glossed as “shellfish” and excludes fish. A Spanish speaker could easily
approximate the English meaning by saying mariscos o pescado (“shellfish or fish”). 或者
could they?

We investigated how such differences in lexical conventions affect communication. The lex-
icon does a lot of work for the people who share it—words are the backbone of communication,

引文: Rissman, L。, 刘, Q., & Lupyan,
G. (2023). Gaps in the Lexicon Restrict
沟通. 开放的心态:
认知科学的发现,
7, 412–434. https://doi.org/10.1162
/opmi_a_00089

DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1162/opmi_a_00089

补充材料:
https://doi.org/10.1162/opmi_a_00089

已收到: 18 十一月 2022
公认: 20 六月 2023

利益争夺: 作者
声明不存在利益冲突.

通讯作者:
Lilia Rissman
lrissman@wisc.edu

版权: © 2023
麻省理工学院
在知识共享下发布
归因 4.0 国际的
(抄送 4.0) 执照

麻省理工学院出版社

Gaps in the Lexicon Restrict Communication

Rissman et al.

they influence memory, and they facilitate category learning (see Kemmerer, 2019; Lupyan,
2012; Lupyan & Zettersten, 2021; Wolff & Holmes, 2011). But how necessary is it to have a
conventionalized term for the precise idea one wants to communicate? 毕竟, only a tiny
fraction of the categories that people think and communicate about are lexicalized in any given
language and it is compositionality that gives language its full expressive power. Do lexical
gaps really restrict people’s communication?

Our focus is on superordinate nouns such as appetizers, beverages, and crimes—words that
denote categories of basic level nouns and that are often possible to convey through para-
phrases and ad-hoc descriptions. We use a cross-linguistic approach, comparing how
Chinese- and English-speaking adults communicate about superordinate categories which
are lexicalized in one language, but not the other. We test two mechanisms by which the pres-
ence of a conventional superordinate term could enhance communication. 第一的, the term
could boost communication because language users may be more likely to align in their
understanding of the term than in their understanding of a longer phrasal description. 第二,
the term could boost communication because sharing the term may result in language users
representing the members of that category as more similar to each other than they would be
否则. We test these mechanisms using a Director-Matcher task in which Directors view
list of words and provide verbal clues to allow Matchers to select the same words from a larger
放 (see De Ruiter, 2013 for review).

Words and Phrases: Different Paths to the Same Meaning?

Toward motivating the hypothesis that people are more aligned in their understanding of a
conventional term than a phrasal expression, we review two lines of inquiry: research on
whether languages are all equally able to convey the same set of ideas, and research on
how linguistic structure is shaped by communicative pressures. Considering the first, vocabu-
laries of different languages carve up the world of human experience in different ways (看
Enfield, 2014; 埃文斯 & Levinson, 2009; Kemmerer, 2019; Malt & Majid, 2013 for review).
例如, Persian lexicalizes in a single word ænduh emotions that English speakers
distinguish as grief and regret ( Jackson et al., 2019); Spanish speakers use the single label
frasco for both a squeezable mustard bottle and a peanut butter jar (Malt et al., 1999,
2003). How do such differences in lexicalization affect communication? Are some ideas more
easily expressed in some languages than in others?

Readers may have the intuition that some words are difficult to translate from one lan-
guage into another (see Eco, 2000; Thompson et al., 2020 供讨论), a sentiment
evinced by the Italian expression traduttore, traditore (an expression that is itself only loosely
captured by its English gloss “the translator is a traitor”). 尽管如此, the view that no
language is more or less expressive than any other has a long theoretical tradition in linguis-
tics and cognitive science (see House, 2016 for review). As expressed by Jakobson (1959),
“all cognitive experience and its classification is conveyable in any existing language …
Languages differ essentially in what they must convey and not in what they may convey”
(p. 234). The engine of this expressive capacity is compositionality—composing words and
morphemes into larger phrases, language users can convey an infinite number of thoughts. 作为
articulated by Langacker (1967), “we are perfectly competent of forming and mentally manip-
ulating concepts for which no word is available … For example, imagine a unicorn with a
flower growing out of each nostril” (p. 40). Harnad (1996) in turn argues that languages are
mutually intertranslatable: “whether it does so analytically, synthetically, or even entirely
holophrastically, a language must provide the resources for marking distinctly all the

开放的心态: 认知科学的发现

413

我

D
哦
w
n
哦
A
d
e
d

F
r
哦
米
H

t
t

p

:
/
/

d
我
r
e
C
t
.

米

我
t
.

/

e
d
你
哦
p
米

我
/

我

A
r
t
我
C
e
–
p
d

F
/

d
哦

我
/

我

/

.

/

1
0
1
1
6
2
哦
p
米
_
A
_
0
0
0
8
9
2
1
4
8
1
3
2
哦
p
米
_
A
_
0
0
0
8
9
p
d

/

.

我

F

乙
y
G
你
e
s
t

t

哦
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
米
乙
e
r
2
0
2
3

Gaps in the Lexicon Restrict Communication

Rissman et al.

categories we distinguish” (p. 30). 最近, Levinson and Majid (2014) ask whether it
makes “a difference to communication accuracy if a notion is lexically codable or not? 也许
we can do an equally good job at expressing ideas through indirect conveyance” (p. 422). 到
be clear, this debate assumes that users of different languages have comparable familiarity with
the ideas being expressed—a claim of mutual intertranslatability is not defeated by observing
that not all cultures readily express notions like “speeding ticket” and “National League
pennant.”

Much of what people want to convey cannot be expressed through single words. To convey
these non-lexicalized ideas (例如, ingredients used while cooking to season food) 我们依靠
compositionality. Absent a conventionalized superordinate term, languages provide a range of
morphosyntactic strategies that aim to accomplish the same thing as a conventional term
(Mauri, 2017; Mauri & Sansò, 2018). 例如, Kannada speakers can use a reduplicative
战略: if pustaka (‘book’) has a reduplicative marker—pustaka-gistaka—it conveys ‘books
and related stuff’ (Mauri & Sansò, 2018, 前任. 15). The theoretical view that languages have
equivalent expressive capacity is also supported by people’s general ability to adapt their
language to the needs of their situation. 例如, hearing people can successfully com-
municate when forced to use only their hands (Goldin-Meadow et al., 1996; Motamedi et al.,
2019) and people modulate their linguistic choices taking into account the needs and back-
grounds of their addressees (克拉克 & 墨菲, 1982; Horton & Gerrig, 2002; Suffill et al.,
2021). Although morphosyntactic devices vary widely across languages, every language has
a rich toolkit for creating compositional meanings and language users can adjust these tools
as needed to their situation.

Relatively few studies have empirically measured the power of this toolkit. Experiments on
color language show that focal colors are easier to communicate than non-focal colors (Agrillo
& Roberson, 2009; Lantz & Stefflre, 1964). 例如, Agrillo and Roberson (2009) 问
English speakers to communicate a target color to a second group of matchers who had to pick
out the target color from a larger color array using only the description. Descriptions were
shorter and matchers were more accurate for focal than non-focal colors. As descriptions
largely featured basic color terms in combination with modifiers and secondary terms, 这
results demonstrate that English color language is not equally successful at expressing all
regions of color space. 此外, the nameability of colors across languages is weakly cor-
related across languages, suggesting that languages use different linguistic resources for
describing the same regions of color space (Lupyan et al., 2020).

This evidence could be taken to refute the idea that all cognitive experience is conveyable
in any language. These studies do not, 然而, directly address how different languages com-
municate the same ideas. For regions of conceptual/perceptual space that are successfully
communicated in one language (例如, focal colors), it may be that they are successfully
communicated in other languages, just through more syntactically complex expressions. 在
添加, previous studies have not addressed whether different linguistic strategies make a
difference to communication success.

The question of how the presence or absence of a word in one’s lexicon influences com-
munication is also relevant to research on how communicative pressures influence linguistic
结构. 一方面, all languages involve communities jointly creating new linguistic
conventions with other people. In Director-Matcher tasks, people initially refer to geometric
shapes through spontaneous expressions such as an “upside down martini glass in a wire
站立,” but over the course of multiple rounds of communication, converge on much more
compact labels like “martini” (克拉克 & Wilkes-Gibbs, 1986; Hawkins et al., 2020; Krauss &

开放的心态: 认知科学的发现

414

我

D
哦
w
n
哦
A
d
e
d

F
r
哦
米
H

t
t

p

:
/
/

d
我
r
e
C
t
.

米

我
t
.

/

e
d
你
哦
p
米

我
/

我

A
r
t
我
C
e
–
p
d

F
/

d
哦

我
/

我

/

.

/

1
0
1
1
6
2
哦
p
米
_
A
_
0
0
0
8
9
2
1
4
8
1
3
2
哦
p
米
_
A
_
0
0
0
8
9
p
d

/

.

我

F

乙
y
G
你
e
s
t

t

哦
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
米
乙
e
r
2
0
2
3

Gaps in the Lexicon Restrict Communication

Rissman et al.

Weinheimer, 1964). Such studies require participants to create new conventions for not-yet-
lexicalized ideas. All languages also involve combinatorial rules, which users create by break-
ing down holistic forms into smaller units which can be generatively recombined (Kirby et al.,
2015; Motamedi et al., 2019; Nölle et al., 2018; Raviv et al., 2019). The number of conven-
tional terms that language users share has been argued to be shaped by the need to balance
informativeness and complexity, i.e. the lexicon should be large enough to be useful but not so
large that it becomes difficult to learn (吉布森等人。, 2019; 肯普 & Regier, 2012; Zaslavsky
等人。, 2018). Previous research has not, 然而, focused on understanding how this dynamic
plays out for users of an established linguistic system, who have both conventional terms and
compositional rules at their disposal. The Director-Matcher task reported here addresses
whether language users communicate more effectively when using conventions vs. 更多的
compositional strategies.

Do Conventional Terms Affect Conceptual Representations?

In addition to asking how conventional terms affect communication through their presence in
the linguistic signal, we also ask whether conventional terms shape how language users rep-
resent the concepts denoted by the terms. Imagine, 例如, a group of people who eat
similar foods as in the United States but who use a language, Minglish, that lacks the word
appetizers. Speakers of American English might be more effective than Minglish speakers at
communicating this category because they can use the conventional term appetizers rather
than longer, non-conventional phrases like something small to eat before the main course. 它
might also be, 然而, that speakers of American English are more effective at communi-
cating because they represent category members, such as mozzarella sticks, french fries, 春天
rolls, ETC. as more similar to each other than speakers of Minglish do. 那是, the referent space
being communicated about might differ across languages, facilitating communication even if
the conventional term is not part of the signal.

This mechanism is plausible because lexical items have been shown to influence how par-
ticipants represent the degree of similarity between two objects (Lucy & Gaskins, 2001, 2003).
例如, when searching for target objects amid distractor objects in an array, Chinese
speakers made more errors when the target and distractor objects received the same classifier
morpheme than English and Russian speakers did (where the targets and distractors shared no
morphological marking in English and Russian) (斯里尼瓦桑, 2010). In an experiment testing for
EEG signatures of detection of deviant stimuli, Boutonnet et al., (2013) found that English
speakers were more likely than Spanish speakers to perceive infrequent images of cups and
mugs as deviant, the explanation being that these images are described through distinct
English words (cup and mug) but only a single Spanish word (taza). We are not aware of
previous studies testing whether superordinate nouns have such effects on perception of item
相似, or whether such effects are present during a communicative task. 尽管如此,
restructuring of semantic space might be one mechanism through which the lexicon facilitates
沟通.

Superordinate Nouns Across Languages

Superordinates are a valuable domain for the study of translatability across languages, 作为
people are particularly adept at constructing and interpreting novel category descriptions
such as “things to bring with you for a day at the beach.” For example, although English
does not lexicalize the category comprising of necklaces, skirts, rings, and hats, 这

开放的心态: 认知科学的发现

415

我

D
哦
w
n
哦
A
d
e
d

F
r
哦
米
H

t
t

p

:
/
/

d
我
r
e
C
t
.

米

我
t
.

/

e
d
你
哦
p
米

我
/

我

A
r
t
我
C
e
–
p
d

F
/

d
哦

我
/

我

/

/

.

1
0
1
1
6
2
哦
p
米
_
A
_
0
0
0
8
9
2
1
4
8
1
3
2
哦
p
米
_
A
_
0
0
0
8
9
p
d

/

.

我

F

乙
y
G
你
e
s
t

t

哦
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
米
乙
e
r
2
0
2
3

Gaps in the Lexicon Restrict Communication

Rissman et al.

compositional description “things people wear on their bodies” may be sufficient for accurate
communication.1

Superordinates in one language often lack translational equivalents in other languages
(Goddard & Wierzbicka, 2014; Kemmerer, 2019; Mihatsch, 2007; Rosch et al., 1976). 为了
例子, the Chinese superordinate tiáowèipǐn is loosely translated as “ingredients used to
season food” and includes items such as herbs, spices, vinegar, salt, and sugar. 尽管
cultural relevance of this category to English-speaking Americans, the Chinese superordinate
does not correspond to any English superordinate: ingredients is overly broad, containing items
such as butter and eggs, while seasonings and flavorings seem too narrow. Even natural kind
categories that may seem cross-linguistically universal are lexicalized in varying ways across
语言. 例如, Gana divides living things not into categories of plant and animal but
into categories such as kx’ooxo (‘living things which are edible’) and paaxo (‘living things
which are harmful to humans’) (Harrison, 2007).

Current Study

We used a Director-Matcher paradigm, where one set of participants (the Directors) 社区-
nicates a set of referents to a second set of participants (the Matchers) (see Kumar et al., 2021).
Previous research on color naming shows that not all regions of perceptual space are equally
expressible for English speakers. In testing the consequences for communication of having vs.
not having a word, a potential pitfall is asking speakers to communicate ideas which are not
lexicalized in any language and may therefore be linguistically ineffable (Levinson & Majid,
2014). We avoid this pitfall by asking whether Chinese and English speakers communicate
more effectively about categories that are lexicalized in their language but are not in the alter-
nate language. We test the somewhat narrower claim that categories which are lexicalized in
one language can be conveyed with comparable accuracy by speakers of a different language,
who will need to rely on compositional linguistic strategies.

We compared speakers of American English and Chinese for two reasons: 第一的, these lan-
guages vary substantially in how their morphemes lexicalize semantic space (帕卡德, 2000;
Saji et al., 2011), and we were able to identify, for each language, superordinates that lacked
commonly-used translation equivalents in the other language. 第二, there is sufficient cul-
tural overlap between the United States and China that we were able to identify categories that
are familiar and culturally relevant for both groups of speakers, even if they are lexicalized in
only one of the languages.

方法

参加者

We recruited 157 participants to play Directors (77 American English speakers: Nfemale = 34,
Nmale = 42; age M = 37; range = 19–63, 和 80 Chinese speakers: Nfemale = 62, Nmale = 17,
age M = 22, range = 18–43. An additional 10 English speakers and seven Chinese speakers
were tested and excluded for producing clues that referenced targets individually, 例如, “home

1 There are different types of superordinate nouns, 例如, some are mass nouns (野生动物) and others count nouns
(动物) ( Wisniewski et al., 1996). Whether a particular category label has mass or count syntax also differs
across languages (Takatori & Schwanenflugel, 1992). 我们不, 所以, assume that superordinates consti-
tute a homogenous lexical class. 的确, the individual superordinates tested in this study differed in terms of
the descriptions they elicited and how accurately they were communicated, a point we return to in Which
Categories Were Easiest and Hardest to Convey? 部分.

开放的心态: 认知科学的发现

416

我

D
哦
w
n
哦
A
d
e
d

F
r
哦
米
H

t
t

p

:
/
/

d
我
r
e
C
t
.

米

我
t
.

/

e
d
你
哦
p
米

我
/

我

A
r
t
我
C
e
–
p
d

F
/

d
哦

我
/

我

/

/

.

1
0
1
1
6
2
哦
p
米
_
A
_
0
0
0
8
9
2
1
4
8
1
3
2
哦
p
米
_
A
_
0
0
0
8
9
p
d

.

/

我

F

乙
y
G
你
e
s
t

t

哦
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
米
乙
e
r
2
0
2
3

Gaps in the Lexicon Restrict Communication

Rissman et al.

to gators, sink, small mountains” for the targets swamp, basin, hills. We excluded such clues
because the purpose of the experiment was to test how people communicate categories (IE。,
regions of conceptual space), rather than a disjoint list of words. Two-hundred ten participants
played Matchers: 86 American English speakers: Nfemale = 39, Nmale = 47; age M = 40; range =
21–70, 和 124 Chinese speakers: Nfemale = 109, Nmale = 14; age M = 23; range = 18–50. 一个
additional English speaker was tested and excluded for failing more than one attention check
trial out of five. English speakers were recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk and were
located in the United States. Chinese speakers were recruited through Chinese social media
platforms and were located in China. Directors received $2.00/20 RMB and Matchers received $1.50/20 RMB for participating.2 Informed consent was obtained for all participants.

Design and Materials

We identified 10 English and 10 Chinese superordinate terms which we judged to lack a
commonly-used translation equivalent in the other language (桌子 1). The category denoted
by the superordinate term in one language cross-cuts the categories denoted by the labels that
are most semantically similar to that term in the other language. 例如, the English
superordinate beverage includes alcoholic drinks such as beer and wine as well as non-
alcoholic drinks such as soda. Chinese has distinct terms for alcoholic and non-alcoholic
drinks (jiǔ vs. yǐnliào) and lacks a term that is translationally equivalent to beverage.

To test whether the availability of a superordinate term influences how people communi-
cate about these categories, we asked participants to complete a referential matching task
where each participant played either a Director or Matcher role. Directors viewed a 3 × 3 grid
with a noun in each cell. Three of these nouns were highlighted and served as targets
(数字 1). The three targets corresponded to a superordinate term in either English or Chinese
(例如, English beverage → wine, coffee, juice; Chinese tiáowèipǐn ‘ingredients used to flavor
food’ → pepper, sugar, soy sauce). The targets for each superordinate cross-cut the labels avail-
able in the other language. 例如, beverage trials did not include target triads such as
soda, juice, sparkling water, as this triad could be expressed through the Chinese superordinate
term yǐnliào (‘non-alcoholic drinks’). The targets were all typical examples of the superordi-
nate. We asked English and Chinese speakers to list six members of each superordinate cate-
gory in Table 1 and we used these norms to select the targets for each superordinate.

At the request of an anonymous reviewer, we conducted a norming study in which 70
English and 59 Chinese speakers evaluated whether the targets were good examples of the
superordinate terms. 例如, English speakers rated on a 1–5 point scale whether they
agreed with the statement “soda is a type of beverage.” These participants also rated whether
the targets were good examples of close, single word translations of the superordinate terms in
the alternate language. 例如, Chinese speakers rated whether they agreed that soda is a
type of jiǔ (‘alcoholic drink’), where jiǔ is a close translation of beverage. 反过来, 英语
speakers rated whether they agreed that vinegar is a type of condiment, where condiment is a
close translation of tiáowèipǐn. For some of the superordinate terms, we tested multiple close
translations (例如, both jiǔ (‘alcoholic drink’) and yǐnliào (‘non-alcoholic drink’) for beverages).
We collected ratings for all target/superordinate and target/close translation pairs. 我们发现
that ratings were higher for the superordinate terms than the close translations (English terms:
4.6 与. 3.7, β = .69, 95% CI = [.30, 1.08], t = 3.47, p < .01; Chinese terms: 4.4 vs. 4.0, β = .31, 95% CI = [.07, .54], t = 2.55, p < .05). At the same time, for one of the English terms and four 2 English data was collected before Chinese data, and we decided after English data collection to pay Chinese Directors and Matchers the same amount. OPEN MIND: Discoveries in Cognitive Science 417 l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . / e d u o p m i / l a r t i c e - p d f / d o i / i . / / 1 0 1 1 6 2 o p m _ a _ 0 0 0 8 9 2 1 4 8 1 3 2 o p m _ a _ 0 0 0 8 9 p d . / i f b y g u e s t t o n 0 7 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 Gaps in the Lexicon Restrict Communication Rissman et al. Table 1. English and Chinese superordinate terms tested in Experiment 1. English terms (Chinese close translations) appetizers (kāiwèicài, light dishes to stimulate the appetite) beverages ( jiǔ, alcoholic drink; yǐnliào, nonalcoholic drink) crafts (shǒugōng, handicrafts) crimes (zuìxíng, felony) drugs (yàopǐn, pharmaceutical drugs; dúpǐn, psychedelic drugs) pests (hàichóng, damaging insects) precipitation ( jiàngshuǐ, falling water in liquid form) skills ( jìnéng, professional skills; jìqiǎo, tips and tricks) snacks (xiǎochī, regional cuisine; língshí, processed snacks) vehicles (chēliàng, motor vehicles; chuán, boat) Chinese terms (English gloss) nóngchǎnpǐn (agricultural products and livestock) huàzhuāngpǐn (cosmetics and facial products) dìxíng (terrain and water features) jiājù (furniture and home décor) fúshì (apparel, shoes, and jewelry) shuǐyù (bodies of water) shēngwù (living things) diànqì (electrical appliances and devices) tiáowèipǐn (food seasonings) fēngjǐng (scenic places to visit) Note. English terms are accompanied by a list of close translations in Chinese, with glosses of those terms. Chinese terms are accompanied by English glosses. of the Chinese terms, ratings of the close translations were as high as the superordinate terms (e.g., the ratings for English apparel were similar to the ratings for Chinese fúshì). We return to differences across individual terms in Which Categories Were Easiest and Hardest to Convey? section. Full norming data and visualizations are available in Table S3 and Figure S2 in Supplementary Materials. In addition to the targets, the grids included two other types of nouns: two lures, which were semantically similar to the targets, but were not members of the target superordinate cat- egory (e.g., for beverage these were vinegar and oil ), and four unrelated words, which were semantically dissimilar to the targets and lures (e.g., motorcycle, star, tree, sleet). Lures were designed to make it difficult for participants to describe the targets in terms of labels more OPEN MIND: Discoveries in Cognitive Science 418 l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . / e d u o p m i / l a r t i c e - p d f / d o i / i / . / 1 0 1 1 6 2 o p m _ a _ 0 0 0 8 9 2 1 4 8 1 3 2 o p m _ a _ 0 0 0 8 9 p d . / i f b y g u e s t t o n 0 7 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 Gaps in the Lexicon Restrict Communication Rissman et al. Figure 1. left. The targets in this example correspond to the Chinese term tiáowèipǐn (‘ingredients used to flavor food’). (A) An example trial shown to a (English-speaking) Director. (B) An example trial shown to a Matcher yoked to the Director on the general than the superordinate—for example, to describe wine, coffee, juice as “liquids” rather than as “beverages.” Unrelated words for each superordinate were selected randomly from the set of targets and lures for other superordinates. Another consideration for selecting the items was that they be familiar to both English and Chinese speakers, e.g., beer but not oregano is common in both the US and China. Lures and unrelated words were selected by the first and second authors according to these criteria. We constructed six unique grids for each superordinate term. The set of three targets dif- fered across the six grids but individual nouns sometimes appeared in multiple grids. For example, the targets were wine, coffee, juice in one beverage grid and coffee, beer, tea in another. The grids for each English and Chinese superordinate were translated into Chinese and English, respectively. Directors and Matchers saw two grids per superordinate and each grid contained different items. We constructed nine combinations of grids such that the par- ticular grids seen for beverages and tiáowèipǐn, for example, were not always the same. Procedure Directors were instructed to write a clue that would enable another person to choose the high- lighted and only the highlighted words from the same grid. An error message appeared if Director’s clue contained any of the words in the grid. Each Director viewed 40 trials, pre- sented in a random order. The position of each word in the 3 × 3 grid was randomized. The Matching task was conducted after the Director task. Matchers were yoked to a particular Director and saw the same grids as that Director (without highlighting and with the items re- ordered). Matchers were asked to select the word or words that match the clue. Matchers com- pleted five attention check trials where they were asked to pick a particular word from the grid (e.g., selecting purple from a grid containing color words). All studies were conducted online. OPEN MIND: Discoveries in Cognitive Science 419 l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . / e d u o p m i / l a r t i c e - p d f / d o i / i . / / 1 0 1 1 6 2 o p m _ a _ 0 0 0 8 9 2 1 4 8 1 3 2 o p m _ a _ 0 0 0 8 9 p d . / i f b y g u e s t t o n 0 7 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 Gaps in the Lexicon Restrict Communication Rissman et al. Director Coding To understand what kinds of clues were produced (and to subsequently link these to Matchers’ success rates), we coded each clue produced by each Director into several categories (Table 2). Chinese Directors sometimes produced variations of the intended superordinate—for example, tiáowèiliào or tiáoliào could be used instead of tiáowèipǐn. We coded these as being an instance of the intended superordinate, as these variations can be used interchangeably. As Chinese orthography lacks word boundaries, we applied Packard’s (2000) compositionality criterion to determine if a clue should be coded as superordinate or modified superordinate. Table 2. Coding categories for Directors’ clues with descriptions and English examples. Category Intended Superordinate The intended superordinate term from Table 1 Description Modified Intended Superordinate The intended superordinate term is used but is modified Other Superordinate A single superordinate term that differs from the intended term Examples “vehicles” “types of precipitation” “greasy appetizers” “sweet or salty snacks” “skills that require learning” “accessories” “drinks” “food” Modified Other Superordinate A superordinate term other than the intended term is modified “food ingredients” Set Operational A category based on the intersection, union, and/or complementation of multiple superordinate terms Property A property or constitutive feature of the targets Thing-Property A phrase where the targets are described as things having a particular property Context Association A word or phrase that is associated with the targets but is not a property or superordinate term Additional Exemplar A word or phrase that is a member of the same category as the targets OPEN MIND: Discoveries in Cognitive Science 420 l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . / e d u o p m i / l a r t i c e - p d f / d o i / i . / / 1 0 1 1 6 2 o p m _ a _ 0 0 0 8 9 2 1 4 8 1 3 2 o p m _ a _ 0 0 0 8 9 p d . / i f b y g u e s t t o n 0 7 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 “animals that are annoying” “common ingredients of a chinese glaze style sauce” “insects and rodents” “clothing or hair products” “sneaky” “good on chips” “water” “living things” “things that have legs” “things you can use for your hobbies” “bad fairy tale” “nature” “Game of thrones” “valley” (for targets swamp, hills, basin) Gaps in the Lexicon Restrict Communication Rissman et al. That is, if the meaning of a clue is not compositionally transparent from its morphological structure and if it would lose its idiomatic meaning by changing any of its morphemes, it was coded as a superordinate. For example, for a tiáowèipǐn trial, the clue jiàngliào (‘sauce’) was coded as Other Superordinate but the clue chúfáng yuáncáiliào (‘kitchen raw materials’) was coded as Modified Other Superordinate. Clues were coded by the first and second authors and by one English-speaking and one Chinese-speaking research assistant. Clues which were not obviously instances of any of the categories in Table 2 were discussed as a group and assigned a category. Similarity Ratings To assess whether the presence of a superordinate term was related to how speakers represent the similarity space of the nouns in each category (see Do Conventional Terms Affect Concep- tual Representations? section), we asked English and Chinese speakers to rate the pairwise similarity between the nouns comprising the target categories. We recruited 124 participants (62 English speakers: Nfemale = 25, Nmale = 36; age M = 40; range = 21–67, and 62 Chinese speakers: Nfemale = 40, Nmale = 14; age M = 25; range = 18–67). An additional three English and 11 Chinese speakers were tested but were excluded for being a non-native speaker (of English: N = 1) or for failing one or more attention check trials out of four (English: N = 2; Chinese: N = 11). English speakers were recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk and were located in the United States; Chinese speakers were recruited through Chinese social media platforms and were located in China. Participants received $1.50/9 RMB and an additional $1/7 RMB bonus if they rated two sets of word pairs. For each language, we collected ratings for 854 word pairs (e.g., beer-soda) out of a total of 1800 word pairs across all grids. We collected ratings for all target-target pairs (360 pairs per language). We also collected ratings for target-lure pairs (e.g., beer-vinegar) in which the lure was chosen on six or more trials of the Matching task by either English or Chinese speakers (334 pairs per language). We additionally collected ratings for 160 target-unrelated pairs in each language (e.g., beer-sky). We tested four randomly selected target-unrelated pairs per term—these pairs were included to increase the diversity of the pairs being rated. We omitted collecting ratings for the majority of target-unrelated pairs, as non-targets were almost never chosen by the Matchers. The target-target, target-lure, and target-unrelated pairs were evenly distributed across 18 lists, such that each list contained 80–88 pairs. English participants were shown the following instructions: “In each trial, you will see two words, where each word refers to a thing. You will rate how similar these two things are to each other. For example, if you saw the words: cat-dog or newspaper-magazine, you should rate these things as being fairly similar to each other. On the other hand, if you saw the words: cat-crocodile or newspaper-truck, you should rate these things as being fairly dissimilar to each other.” Chinese participants were given parallel instructions with translational equivalents of the English example words. Each pair was rated on a scale from 1 (not similar at all) to 5 (very similar). To address possible issues of scale bias across participants, we z-transformed each participant’s set of ratings. RESULTS Analytic Approach We fit mixed effects linear regression models using the lme4 package for R (Bates et al., 2014; R Core Team, 2022). We used sum contrast coding for the independent variables Speaker Language (Chinese speakers vs. English speakers) and Term Language (implicit Chinese super- ordinate terms vs. implicit English superordinate terms). Unless noted otherwise, models OPEN MIND: Discoveries in Cognitive Science 421 l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . / e d u o p m i / l a r t i c e - p d f / d o i / i . / / 1 0 1 1 6 2 o p m _ a _ 0 0 0 8 9 2 1 4 8 1 3 2 o p m _ a _ 0 0 0 8 9 p d . / i f b y g u e s t t o n 0 7 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 Gaps in the Lexicon Restrict Communication Rissman et al. included random intercepts for Participants and Implicit Terms as well as Participant by Term Language random slopes and Implicit Term by Speaker Language random slopes. Coefficient values for the Speaker Language and Term Language variables reflect the difference between Chinese speakers/Chinese terms and the overall mean for each variable. Continuous variables were centered and scaled. We used the lmerTest package (Kuznetsova et al., 2017) and Satterthwaite approximation to compute p-values for fixed effects (see Luke, 2017). Matcher trials with reaction times greater than 25,000 ms were excluded from analysis. 95% confi- dence intervals were calculated using summarySEwithin from the Rmisc package. Stimuli materials, data files, analysis scripts, model syntax, and Supplementary Materials are available at: https://osf.io/cdg4j/. In How Successful Were the Matchers? section, we test whether communication is more accu- rate when a shared superordinate term is available. In How Did Directors’ Clues Affect Matchers’ Accuracy? to What Alternatives to the Intended Superordinate Did People Use? sections, we test whether the observed boost in communication is due to properties of the linguistic signal itself—whether Directors use this shared term rather than other clues, such as ad-hoc, phrasal descriptions. In Did Word Pair Similarity Ratings Differ Across Languages? section, we ask whether superordinate terms influence participants’ similarity ratings of the words in the grids. This analysis addresses whether the observed communication boost is due to shared terms influencing how language users represent the members of each superordinate category. How Successful Were the Matchers? Matchers’ mean accuracy (calculated as their hit rate minus their total false alarm rate) was 76.7% (95% CI = [76.0%, 77.2%]). Mean accuracy across speaker languages and term languages is shown in Figure 2. Table 3 shows performance broken down by hit rates, lure false alarm rates, and unrelated word false alarm rates across speaker languages and term languages. Hit rates were computed as the number of targets selected divided by 3. Lure false alarm rates were the number of lures selected divided by 2; unrelated word false alarm rates were the number of unrelated words selected divided by 4; total false alarm rates were the number of lures and unrelated words selected divided by 6. l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . / e d u o p m i / l a r t i c e - p d f / d o i / i / . / 1 0 1 1 6 2 o p m _ a _ 0 0 0 8 9 2 1 4 8 1 3 2 o p m _ a _ 0 0 0 8 9 p d . / i f b y g u e s t t o n 0 7 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 Figure 2. Mean Matcher accuracy across Speaker Languages and Term Languages. Error bars denote 95% confidence intervals of the mean. OPEN MIND: Discoveries in Cognitive Science 422 Gaps in the Lexicon Restrict Communication Rissman et al. Table 3. Mean hit rates, lure false alarm rates, and unrelated word false alarm rates for each language and term type; 95% confidence intervals of the mean are shown in parentheses. Hit rate (targets) False alarm rate (lures) English speakers Chinese speakers English speakers Chinese speakers Chinese terms Chinese speakers .87 (.01) English terms .83 (.01) .82 (.01) .88 (.01) .22 (.02) .21 (.02) .24 (.02) .19 (.02) False alarm rate (unrelated words) English speakers .03 (.005) .02 (.006) .02 (.005) .02 (.003) To test whether Matcher accuracy was reliably different across these groups, we began with a linear mixed effects model that included Speaker Language and Term Language and their interaction as fixed effects. There were no main effects of Speaker Language or Term Language (ps > .1), but there was a significant Speaker Language-by-Term Language interaction (β = .10,
95% CI = [.05, .15], t = 3.9, p < .01). This indicates that Matchers were more successful for trials corresponding to a conventional term in their language. We will refer to this finding from now on as the congruency advantage. We next examined the contribution of the similarity between each of the targets (target-target similarity) and the similarity between the targets and the lures (target-lure similarity). We calculated these estimates using the pairwise similarity ratings described in Similarity Ratings section (e.g., how similar beer and soda are to each other). The target-target similarity for each grid was the average of the similarity ratings for each pair of targets. Target-lure similarity for each grid was the average of the similarity ratings for each target-lure pair. As we might expect, accuracy was significantly higher for trials with higher target-target similarity (β = .57, 95% CI = [.49, .64], t = 14.6, p < .001), and accuracy was significantly lower for trials with higher target-lure similarity (β = −.14, 95% CI = [−0.2, −0.06], t = −3.5, p < .001). There was no interaction between either similarity type and Speaker- or Term Language (ps > .1). Although adding the similarity ratings improved the fit
of the accuracy model, the size of the congruency advantage was comparable to a model without
the similarity rating predictors (β = .09, 95% CI = [.04, .15], t = 3.2, p < .01). This indicates that the congruency advantage is not mediated by the similarity structure of the items in the grid. How Did Directors’ Clues Affect Matchers’ Accuracy? How did Matchers perform given different types of clues? Setting aside for the moment Direc- tors’ use of Intended Superordinates (i.e., using appetizers for the category comprising French fries, onion rings, and chicken wings), we find that the three most common types of clues were: Other Superordinates (e.g., food for the appetizer category), 26%; Modified Other Superordi- nate (e.g., fried foods), 21%, and Contextual Association (e.g., olive garden), 11%. These three types of clues had Matcher accuracies corresponding to, respectively, 75%, 76%, and 67%. Excluding Intended Superordinates and Modified Intended Superordinates, the relationship between clue-type frequency and Matcher accuracy was r(26) = .30, p > .1 (见图 3).

By definition, producing an Intended Superordinate or a Modified Intended Superordinate was
only possible in a congruent trial. For these trials, the single most common type of clue was
Intended Superordinate, for both Chinese and English speakers (35% 和 34% of clues, 重新指定-
主动地). The use of Intended Superordinates corresponded to highest Matcher accuracies (看
数字 3). To assess how accuracy for each clue type differed from accuracy for Intended Super-
ordinates, we fit separate linear mixed effects models for Chinese and English speakers. Among
English speakers, the use of Intended Superordinate clues led to significantly higher accuracy than
all the other clue types (ps < .01) except for Modified Intended Superordinate (e.g., greasy appe- tizers) (ps > .1). Among Chinese speakers, Intended Superordinate clues also led to significantly
higher accuracy than all the other clue types (ps < .01) except for Modified Intended Superordinate OPEN MIND: Discoveries in Cognitive Science 423 l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . / e d u o p m i / l a r t i c e - p d f / d o i / i / . / 1 0 1 1 6 2 o p m _ a _ 0 0 0 8 9 2 1 4 8 1 3 2 o p m _ a _ 0 0 0 8 9 p d . / i f b y g u e s t t o n 0 7 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 Gaps in the Lexicon Restrict Communication Rissman et al. l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . / e d u o p m i / l a r t i c e - p d f / d o i / i . / / 1 0 1 1 6 2 o p m _ a _ 0 0 0 8 9 2 1 4 8 1 3 2 o p m _ a _ 0 0 0 8 9 p d . / i f b y g u e s t t o n 0 7 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 Figure 3. The relationship between clue type proportion (x axis) and Matcher accuracy (y axis) for Chinese speakers (top) and English speakers (bottom) broken down by Term Language. Perfor- mance for categories lexicalized in Chinese in blue; categories lexicalized in English in orange. By definition, Intended Superordinate and Modified Intended Superordinate clues were only possible for congruent trials, i.e., blue for Chinese speakers and orange for English speakers. Dashed error bars denote 95% confidence intervals of the mean. Dashed horizontal lines show mean Matcher accuracy for Intended Superordinate clues for each speaker group. and Set Operational (e.g., seafood and sides) clues (ps > .1). See Table S1 in Supplementary
Materials for full model specification. These results show that, 一般, Directors were most
successful at conveying the intended category when they used the intended superordinate term.

It may be that the relatively lower success of the alternate strategies is due in part to par-
ticipants being less familiar with the categories in the incongruent trials. 如果, 例如, 一个
English Director is viewing a trial in the Chinese term condition and produces an Other Super-
ordinate clue, accuracy could be lower not because of the clue itself, but because English
Matchers are less disposed to view the targets as part of a single category (lacking an English
term corresponding to this category). To more directly test the communicative efficacy of the
intended superordinates, we examined performance on just the congruent trials (IE。, 英语
categories for English speakers; Chinese categories for Chinese speakers). In Chinese, 准确性
was significantly higher for Intended Superordinates (ps < .01) than for all strategies except OPEN MIND: Discoveries in Cognitive Science 424 Gaps in the Lexicon Restrict Communication Rissman et al. Modified Intended Superordinate, Set Operational, and Thing-Property (ps > .1). 用英语,
accuracy was higher for Intended Superordinates (ps < .01) than for all strategies except Mod- ified Intended Superordinate and Set Operational (ps > .1). See Table S2 in Supplementary
Materials for full model specification. These results show that even when the target categories
were reflected in the speakers’ lexicons, most alternate strategies used by the Directors were
not as effective as the intended superordinate in conveying the category.

Matchers were more accurate when shown grids with items that could be named by a
superordinate term in their language. 此外, accuracy was highest when the clue con-
tained the intended superordinate, which was only possible in the congruent conditions. 作为一个
direct test of how the congruency advantage was driven by the particular clues that the Direc-
tors provided, we examined the size of the interaction term between Speaker Language and
Term Language for the different clue types. We compared these interaction terms to an
intended term baseline computed by comparing accuracy for congruent trials that used an
intended superordinate term with all incongruent trials. 数字 4 shows model coefficients
和 95% confidence intervals for each clue type.

As described in Do Conventional Terms Affect Conceptual Representations? 部分, 这
presence of a label can attune language users to the common structure shared by items that
are members of that category. Directors and Matchers could have shared more similar repre-
sentations of the categories in congruent than incongruent trials, leading to better Matching
accuracy regardless of what clue the Director provided. The pattern shown in Figure 4 argues
against this mechanism. We observed no congruency advantage for any clue type besides
Intended Superordinate/Modified Intended Superordinate. This suggests that the congruency
advantage was driven entirely by use of the intended superordinates.

Language users may be able to overcome the absence of a conventional term in their lan-
guage by using longer, more morphologically complex expressions. As a measure of the com-
plexity of Directors’ clues, we calculated the length of each clue (mean number of characters
for Chinese clues; mean number of words for English clues; see Figure S1 in Supplementary
Materials). Directors largely confined themselves to single words or short phrases: mean clue
length was 3.5 characters in Chinese and 2.2 words in English. In Chinese, the longest types of

我

D
哦
w
n
哦
A
d
e
d

F
r
哦
米
H

t
t

p

:
/
/

d
我
r
e
C
t
.

米

我
t
.

/

e
d
你
哦
p
米

我
/

我

A
r
t
我
C
e
–
p
d

F
/

d
哦

我
/

我

/

.

/

1
0
1
1
6
2
哦
p
米
_
A
_
0
0
0
8
9
2
1
4
8
1
3
2
哦
p
米
_
A
_
0
0
0
8
9
p
d

/

.

我

F

乙
y
G
你
e
s
t

t

哦
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
米
乙
e
r
2
0
2
3

数字 4. Congruency advantage by code type. Model coefficient estimates and 95% confidence
intervals for the Speaker Language by Term Language interaction term for each code type. Code
types are ordered by overall frequency. The coefficient estimate for “intended superordinate”
includes both Intended Superordinates and Modified Intended Superordinates. We did not compute
a model for Additional Exemplar clues as these were too infrequent.

开放的心态: 认知科学的发现

425

Gaps in the Lexicon Restrict Communication

Rissman et al.

clues were Modified Other Superordinate and Set Operational (米= 5.6 characters each); 在
英语, Set Operational and Thing-Property clues (米= 4.3 和 4.2 字, 分别). 我们
tested whether Directors produce longer clues when they are asked to communicate about a
category that is not conventionally named in their language. Chinese clues were significantly
longer than English clues (which is a trivial finding because length for Chinese clues was mea-
sured in characters, not words) (β = .28, 95% CI = [.19, .38], t = 5.64, p < .001); there was no significant effect of Term Language on clue length (β = .011, 95% CI = [−.063, .086], t = .29, p > .1). When tasked with communicating a category conventionalized in their language (试验
in which the Intended Superordinate was available), Directors produced significantly shorter
clues (β = −.073, 95% CI = [−.12, -.027], t = −3.11, p < .01). Overall, clue length did not predict accuracy, either as a linear predictor (β = −.01, 95% CI = [−.037, .017], t = −.74, p >
.1) or a quadratic predictor (β = −.000, 95% CI = [-.024, .024], t = −.012, p > .1). Simply
producing longer clues did not make communication more successful in this task.

我

D
哦
w
n
哦
A
d
e
d

F
r
哦
米
H

t
t

p

:
/
/

d
我
r
e
C
t
.

米

我
t
.

/

e
d
你
哦
p
米

我
/

我

A
r
t
我
C
e
–
p
d

F
/

d
哦

我
/

我

/

/

.

1
0
1
1
6
2
哦
p
米
_
A
_
0
0
0
8
9
2
1
4
8
1
3
2
哦
p
米
_
A
_
0
0
0
8
9
p
d

/

.

我

F

乙
y
G
你
e
s
t

t

哦
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
米
乙
e
r
2
0
2
3

数字 5. Matcher accuracy for Chinese vs. English speakers for each superordinate term. English terms are shown in the upper panel and
Chinese terms in the lower panel. Colored lines show the mean for each group and boxes show 95% confidence intervals of the mean. 之内
each language, individual term panels are ordered by the size of their congruency effect, from largest to smallest.

开放的心态: 认知科学的发现

426

Gaps in the Lexicon Restrict Communication

Rissman et al.

Which Categories Were Easiest and Hardest to Convey?

The categories we used span biological categories, human artifacts, and culturally-specific
types of food. Although Term was included as a random effect in the above models, examining
how accuracy varied for the different terms allows us to see if access to a conventional super-
ordinate was more critical for some terms than others. 数字 5 shows the difference between
Chinese and English Matcher accuracy for each term. Descriptively, most English terms
showed the congruency advantage. Congruency was more variable for Chinese terms, 作为
Chinese speakers showed a strong congruency advantage for only four of the ten terms.

To better understand the variability that we observed across terms, we analyzed the rela-
tionship between the congruency advantage for each term and Directors’ propensity to use the
intended superordinate for that term. For this analysis, we counted both Intended Superordi-
nate and Modified Intended Superordinate clues as using the intended superordinate, as these
two strategies did not lead to significantly different Matcher accuracy. Across individual terms,
use of the intended superordinate ranged widely, 从 96% of clues (tiáowèipǐn ‘seasonings’)
到 8% (shuǐyù ‘bodies of water’). Whether the intended superordinate was used for a particular
term was strongly positively correlated with the size of the congruency advantage for that term
(r(18) = .74, 95% CI = [.44, .89], p < .001; see Figure 6). This result aligns closely with the analyses in the previous section: the congruency advantage is due to the Directors’ actual use l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . / e d u o p m i / l a r t i c e - p d f / d o i / i . / / 1 0 1 1 6 2 o p m _ a _ 0 0 0 8 9 2 1 4 8 1 3 2 o p m _ a _ 0 0 0 8 9 p d / . i f b y g u e s t t o n 0 7 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 Figure 6. Proportion of trials where the Director used the intended superordinate (either Intended Superordinate or Modified Intended Superordinate) vs. Matcher congruency advantage for each superordinate term. The congruency advantage is: for Chinese terms, Chinese Matcher accuracy minus English Matcher accuracy; for English terms, English Matcher accuracy minus Chinese Matcher accuracy. OPEN MIND: Discoveries in Cognitive Science 427 Gaps in the Lexicon Restrict Communication Rissman et al. of the intended superordinate. When this term was not used, Chinese and English speakers had comparable rates of success in using alternate strategies to convey the categories. As described in Design and Materials section, we collected norms of how good each target was as an example of each intended superordinate term (e.g., whether soda is a type of bev- erage). There was a moderate, marginally significant correlation between these ratings and how often Directors used each intended superordinate: r(18) = .39, 95% CI = [−.06, .71], p = .08). To assess whether there was relationship between the norms and the congruency advantage by term, we computed the norm advantage for each term—the difference between the ratings for the intended superordinate and the ratings for the best translation (e.g., bever- ages vs. yǐnliào ‘non-alcoholic drink’). There was a moderate correlation between the norm advantage and the congruency advantage for each term: r(18) = .51, 95% CI = [.09, .78], p < .05. We fit a single model of the congruency effect, asking whether the norm advantage and Directors’ propensity to use the intended superordinate made independent contributions. There was a marginally significant effect of norm advantage (β = 0.31, 95% CI = [−.024, .64], t = 1.95, p = .07), suggesting that when lexical gaps are greater (i.e., a set of targets is well lexicalized in one language but not another), Matchers may have more difficulty recon- structing the categories seen by the Directors. However, the variability in congruency effect that we observed across terms was primarily explained by whether the intended superordinate terms were used by Directors (β = 0.64, 95% CI = [.30, .97], t = 4.05, p < .001). Given the demonstrated advantage of using the intended superordinate, we asked how consistent this strategy was across participants. Directors’ likelihood of using the intended superordinate in congruent trials ranged from 0% to 75% (1st quartile = 30%; 3rd quartile = 50%). We return to this point in the Discussion, when we consider how individuals might differ in their choice of strategies and how this is relevant to theories of communication. What Alternatives to the Intended Superordinate Did People Use? The analyses thus far show that use of the intended superordinate has a robust effect on com- munication: in both languages, Matchers are more accurate when the Director uses the intended term. At the same time, intended superordinates were used on fewer than half of the congruent trials. So, even when speakers had the intended term available to them (at least in principle) they used a variety of other strategies which sometimes led to perfect accuracy. As a demonstration of the range of alternate strategies that Directors used, Table 4 shows some of the English clues for appetizers trials that led to perfect accuracy. For this example, the targets were French fries, onion rings, and chicken wings and the lures were hamburger and Table 4. Example English and Chinese clues that led to 100% Matcher accuracy. Example clues for appetizers fast food snacks that have no beef deep fried salty foods without a bun unhealthy sides Example clues for fēngjǐng (scenic places to visit) chángjiànde jǐngqū (‘common places of interest’) gǔlǎo ér shénmìde dìfāng (‘ancient and mysterious places’) jǐngdiǎn (‘places of interest’) Zìrán hé rénwén fēngjǐng (‘natural and cultural scenic places to visit’) these are common snacks you can share bīngxuěqíyuán (‘Frozen’; i.e., film name) cooked in oil OPEN MIND: Discoveries in Cognitive Science 428 l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . / e d u o p m i / l a r t i c e - p d f / d o i / i / / . 1 0 1 1 6 2 o p m _ a _ 0 0 0 8 9 2 1 4 8 1 3 2 o p m _ a _ 0 0 0 8 9 p d / . i f b y g u e s t t o n 0 7 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 Gaps in the Lexicon Restrict Communication Rissman et al. broccoli. Although appetizers was the modal clue for these trials, Directors often used a flex- ible, non-conventional description, drawing on other superordinates (snacks, sides, foods) in conjunction with different properties that the targets share (being fried, being salty, being unhealthy). Table 4 also shows some of the Chinese clues for fēngjǐng (‘scenic places to visit’) that led to 100% accuracy. For these clues, the targets were lake, forest, and castle and the lures were soil and land. In addition to using other superordinates like dìfāng (‘places’) and jǐngdiǎn (‘places of interest’), Chinese Directors also provided contextual clues integrating the targets, as with bīngxuěqíyuán (‘Frozen’), and highlighted specific features of the targets, such as being ancient and mysterious. These examples demonstrate that even when a conventional term was available to com- municate a category, Directors sometimes chose to highlight more idiosyncratic dimensions along which the targets were similar to each other, and that these compositional descriptions sometimes resulted in perfect accuracy. Did Word Pair Similarity Ratings Differ Across Languages? In our analyses of Matcher accuracy, we included mean target-target and target-lure similarity ratings as predictors (these ratings are described in Similarity Ratings section). As expected, target-target pairs were rated as more similar (M = .36) than target-lure pairs (M = −.14) (β = .48, 95% CI = [.46, .51], t = 32.7, p < .001). In a final analysis, we ask whether the similarity ratings are themselves influenced by the presence of a superordinate. That is, do speakers judge that two targets are more similar to each other when they are part of an intended super- ordinate category than when they are not? To test this question, we analyzed the ratings for individual target-target pairs across Speaker Languages and Term Languages. English target-target pairs were rated as more similar than Chinese target-target pairs (M = .49 vs. M = .24), but this difference was not statistically significant (β = −.12, 95% CI = [−.29, .045], t = −1.44, p > .1).3 English ratings were not different overall than Chinese ratings (米=
.36 与. 米= .37; β = .007, 95% CI = [-.04, .058], t = .27, p > .1). The crucial question is
whether there was a Speaker Language by Term Language interaction such that the same pairs
were rated as more similar for congruent trials. This interaction was not statistically significant
(β = .041, 95% CI = [-.012, .093], t = 1.5, p > .1), suggesting that the superordinate terms in
our study do not affect how Chinese and English raters represent the similarity space of the
items in the grids. For ratings of target-lure similarity, there were no significant effects of
Speaker Language, Term Language, or their interaction (ps > .1).4

GENERAL DISCUSSION

Languages differ in the categories they express using conventional terms. Because languages
are compositional, ideas not lexicalized through a conventional term (例如, “comfort TV
shows”) can nevertheless be expressed. Does the generative, compositional capacity of lan-
guage allow an idea lexicalized in one language to be expressed equally well in languages
that do not lexicalize this idea? We investigated the consequences of having vs. not having a
conventional term on speakers’ ability to communicate superordinate categories. 我们发现
that conventional terms matter. Matchers were more accurate when they had to infer a

3 Note that this regression estimate, derived from a mixed model with random intercepts and slopes, indicates
that English pairs are less similar than Chinese pairs, an effect in the opposite direction from what is indicated by
the raw means.
4 This model excluded Participant by Term Language random slopes due to convergence failure.

开放的心态: 认知科学的发现

429

我

D
哦
w
n
哦
A
d
e
d

F
r
哦
米
H

t
t

p

:
/
/

d
我
r
e
C
t
.

米

我
t
.

/

e
d
你
哦
p
米

我
/

我

A
r
t
我
C
e
–
p
d

F
/

d
哦

我
/

我

/

.

/

1
0
1
1
6
2
哦
p
米
_
A
_
0
0
0
8
9
2
1
4
8
1
3
2
哦
p
米
_
A
_
0
0
0
8
9
p
d

.

/

我

F

乙
y
G
你
e
s
t

t

哦
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
米
乙
e
r
2
0
2
3

Gaps in the Lexicon Restrict Communication

Rissman et al.

category that had a conventional label in their language (IE。, there was a congruency advan-
tage). The strength of the congruency advantage across individual terms was strongly corre-
lated with Directors’ propensity to use the intended superordinate. The congruency advantage
disappeared when the Director did not use the intended superordinate term.

Cross-linguistic differences have been shown to affect how language users represent the
similarity of object tokens in non-linguistic tasks (Do Conventional Terms Affect Conceptual
Representations? 部分). We did not find evidence for such an effect in this task—there was
no congruency advantage when the clue did not contain the intended superordinate. 在阿迪-
的, there was no congruency advantage in the pairwise similarity rating task. 例如,
English speakers rated the similarity between items comprising the category dìxíng (例如,
mountain/valley, valley/river, ETC。) as similarly as Chinese speakers did, despite not having a
conventional term. These results suggest that Chinese speakers do not represent mountain,
valley, and river as being more conceptually unified than English speakers do, 虽然
this category is lexicalized in Chinese but not English. Given the limitations on what can be
inferred from such a null result, further experimentation is needed to gain a fuller understand-
ing of whether superordinate terms can restructure how objects are conceptualized. 更远
experimentation is also needed to address whether conventional terms would affect similarity
ratings if the words were viewed in the context of the entire nine word grid, rather than in
isolated pairs (see Goldstone, 1994).

Our results show that despite the flexibility languages afford us, there is a limitation on how
well people can communicate in the absence of a conventional label. This limitation is at the
practical level rather than the absolute level. It is entirely possible that an experienced trans-
lator, with native language experience in both English and Chinese and with suitable cultural
知识, may be able to compensate for the lack of a conventional superordinate term. 这是
also possible that in an interactive context that allows for repair, speakers can quickly align to
avoid the kinds of miscommunication we observed in our non-interactive tasks. 那就是说,
even a small advantage for interpreting conventional terms over ad-hoc phrases may result
in a substantial cumulative advantage in real-world situations where repair can be costly
and speed is of the essence.

Using the intended superordinate puts the Director/Matcher pair at a decided advantage in
our tasks. Despite the clear benefit of using superordinates, Directors in congruent trials used
the intended superordinate as a clue less than 50% 当时的. Our norming data show that on
average, the targets were rated as good examples of each superordinate term (receiving an
average rating of at least 4.0 on a scale from 1 到 5; see Figure S2). Non-use of the intended
superordinate may therefore be a partial consequence of multiple superordinates being
available that share similar meanings (例如, some English Directors used the clue drinks instead
of beverages). The Other Superordinate strategy was used on only 16% of congruent trials,
然而. On the remaining 44% of the trials, Directors used longer, compositional descrip-
系统蒸发散. We speculated at the outset that if language users share a short, conventional term, 然后
in a communicative task such as ours, they will primarily use this term. The actual range of
clues that Directors used was more variable than we expected.

Being able to flexibly describe categories through compositional expressions is clearly
important because most ideas that we want to convey in everyday life are not lexicalized. 这
flexibility allowed Chinese and English speakers to be moderately successful in the incongru-
ent conditions, with Matchers achieving 74% 准确性. Less intuitively, flexibility appears to
remain important even when one’s language does lexicalize a particular idea. Directors used
the intended superordinate on less than half of congruent trials even though avoiding the

开放的心态: 认知科学的发现

430

我

D
哦
w
n
哦
A
d
e
d

F
r
哦
米
H

t
t

p

:
/
/

d
我
r
e
C
t
.

米

我
t
.

/

e
d
你
哦
p
米

我
/

我

A
r
t
我
C
e
–
p
d

F
/

d
哦

我
/

我

.

/

/

1
0
1
1
6
2
哦
p
米
_
A
_
0
0
0
8
9
2
1
4
8
1
3
2
哦
p
米
_
A
_
0
0
0
8
9
p
d

.

/

我

F

乙
y
G
你
e
s
t

t

哦
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
米
乙
e
r
2
0
2
3

Gaps in the Lexicon Restrict Communication

Rissman et al.

intended superordinate came at the cost of lower accuracy. This suggests that combinatorial
strategies beyond the intended superordinate confer their own type of communicative
优势.

A prominent viewpoint is that communication is structured to maximize efficiency
(吉布森等人。, 2019; 坎普等人。, 2018; Piantadosi et al., 2011; Rubio-Fernandez & Jara-
Ettinger, 2020; 特罗特 & 卑尔根, 2022). As described by Gibson et al. (2019), “Efficiency in com-
munication means that successful communication can be achieved with minimal effort on
average by the sender and receiver. 通常, effort is quantified using the length of messages,
so efficient communication means that signals are short on average while maximizing the rate
of communicative success” (391). While Directors used the most efficient type of signal (这
intended superordinate) on a plurality of congruent trials, this framework does not readily
explain variability at the level of individual participants and trials. 例如, why would
Directors often choose to produce longer, compositional descriptions when single word con-
ventional terms are available, especially given that the conventional terms result in higher
准确性? Directors would of course be expected to use longer over shorter clues if they
believed this would lead to a higher probability of success, but it is unclear why the clues
表中 4, such as cooked in oil, 例如, would be more successful than the conven-
tional term appetizers. 此外, individual Directors varied widely in their propensity to use
the intended superordinate, a type of individual difference which is not readily explained
within a theory where speakers are motivated in general to be efficient.

Our study suggests that robustness in communication is a product of both conventionality
and compositionality working in conjunction (see Tamariz & Kirby, 2016). The benefits of lin-
guistic conventions are manifest. Speakers’ use of compositional descriptions, 在另一
手, offers its own advantage. 第一的, using a flexible, combinatorial strategy may help
speakers overcome bottlenecks in lexical access (see Levelt et al., 1999; Marslen-Wilson,
2001; Roelofs, 1992). Being able to convey categories through multiple strategies means that
communication can proceed even if accessing particular lexical items (例如, appetizers, precip-
itation) is fragile. 第二, use of non-conventional strategies may be the result of Directors’
flexible construal of the categories articulated by the targets. The examples in Table 4 展示
that Directors were attuned to many different properties of the targets, some of which had sim-
ilar meanings to appetizers (例如, common snacks you can share), some of which did not (例如,
salty foods without a bun). The human ability to calculate what two items have in common is
hugely flexible (刘 & Lupyan, 2023). It may be that suppressing these multiple construals and
considering only those categories that are lexicalized in a single word involves additional
communicative effort by Directors. In everyday life, context will influence which properties
of the targets are most relevant (例如, common ingredients vs. common food rituals). 在里面
context of our task, Directors needed to decide for themselves which properties to highlight.
Our study suggests that language users reduce communicative effort not only by reducing the
length of their messages but also by favoring those construals of the world which are most
conceptually prominent.

结论

People often wonder whether some ideas are better expressed in some languages than others.
Although it is commonly asserted that all languages are mutually intertranslatable, such inter-
translatability cannot be assumed but must be tested. Our study provides one such test: 我们发现
that communication is more successful when speakers can use a conventional term to convey
a superordinate category. This suggests a practical limitation on what speakers convey when

开放的心态: 认知科学的发现

431

我

D
哦
w
n
哦
A
d
e
d

F
r
哦
米
H

t
t

p

:
/
/

d
我
r
e
C
t
.

米

我
t
.

/

e
d
你
哦
p
米

我
/

我

A
r
t
我
C
e
–
p
d

F
/

d
哦

我
/

我

/

.

/

1
0
1
1
6
2
哦
p
米
_
A
_
0
0
0
8
9
2
1
4
8
1
3
2
哦
p
米
_
A
_
0
0
0
8
9
p
d

.

/

我

F

乙
y
G
你
e
s
t

t

哦
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
米
乙
e
r
2
0
2
3

Gaps in the Lexicon Restrict Communication

Rissman et al.

there is no linguistic convention to help them align their ideas. These results suggest that
communication is robust because speakers can flexibly draw on both conventions and com-
positional resources when conveying meanings.

致谢

Thank you to Kevin Mui for JavaScript help and to Jing Paul, Kesong Cao, and Xiaoya Gong for
help with online participant recruitment. We appreciate Xiaoya Gong for her hard work coding
Chinese descriptions. Thank you to attendees of Experiments in Linguistic Meaning 2 并
members of the Lupyan Lab for their feedback on this work. Thank you to all study
参与者.

作者贡献

Lilia Rissman: 概念化; 形式分析; 调查; 方法; 项目
行政; 可视化; Writing—Original draft; Writing—Revision & 编辑. Qiawen
刘: 概念化; 调查; 方法; 项目管理; 可视化;
Writing—Original draft. Gary Lupyan: 概念化; 形式分析; Funding acquisi-
的; 方法; 项目管理; 监督; 可视化; Writing—Original draft;
Writing—Revision & 编辑.

DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT

Stimuli materials, data files, analysis scripts, model syntax, and Supplementary Materials are
可以在: https://osf.io/cdg4j/.

资金信息

This research was supported by NSF PAC 2020969 awarded to G. Lupyan.

参考

Agrillo, C。, & Roberson, D. (2009). Colour language and colour
认识: Brown and Lenneberg revisited. Visual Cognition,
17(3), 412–430. https://doi.org/10.1080/13506280802049247
巴尔萨卢, L. 瓦. (1983). Ad hoc categories. 记忆 & 认识, 11(3),
211–227. https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03196968, 考研: 6621337
Bates, D ., Maechler, M。, Bolker, B., & 沃克, S. (2014). lme4:
Linear mixed-effects models using ‘eigen’ and S4 (R package
version 1.1-7). https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=lme4

Boutonnet, B., Dering, B., Viñas-Guasch, N。, & Thierry, G. (2013).
Seeing objects through the language glass. 认知杂志
神经科学, 25(10), 1702–1710. https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn
_a_00415, 考研: 23647557

克拉克, H. H。, & 墨菲, G. L. (1982). Audience design in meaning
and reference. In J.-F. Le Ny & 瓦. Kintsch (编辑。), Advances in psy-
chology: Language and comprehension (卷. 9, PP. 287–299).
爱思唯尔. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0166-4115(09)60059-5

克拉克, H. H。, & Wilkes-Gibbs, D. (1986). Referring as a collabora-
tive process. 认识, 22(1), 1–39. https://doi.org/10.1016
/0010-0277(86)90010-7, 考研: 3709088

De Ruiter, J. 磷. (2013). Methodological paradigms in interaction
研究. In I. Wachsmuth, J. 磷. De Ruiter, 磷. Jaecks, & S. Kopp
(编辑。), Alignment in communication: Towards a new theory of
沟通 (卷. 6, PP. 11–32). John Benjamins. https://土井
.org/10.1075/ais.6.02rui

生态, U. (2000). Experiences in translation. 多伦多大学

按.

Enfield, 氮. J. (2014). The utility of meaning: What words mean and
为什么. 牛津大学出版社. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso
/9780198709831.001.0001

埃文斯, N。, & Levinson, S. C. (2009). The myth of language univer-
sals: Language diversity and its importance for cognitive science.
Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 32(5), 429–448. https://doi.org/10
.1017/S0140525X0999094X, 考研: 19857320

吉布森, E., 富特雷尔, R。, 匹安多糖, S. P。, Dautriche, 我。, Mahowald,
K., 卑尔根, L。, & 征收, 右. (2019). How efficiency shapes human
语言. 认知科学的趋势, 23(5), 389–407. https://
doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2019.02.003, 考研: 31006626

Goddard, C。, & Wierzbicka, A. (2014). Words and meanings:
Lexical semantics across domains, 语言, and cultures.
牛津大学出版社. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso
/9780199668434.001.0001

Goldin-Meadow, S。, McNeill, D ., & Singleton, J. (1996). Silence is
liberating: Removing the handcuffs on grammatical expression
in the manual modality. 心理评论, 103(1), 34–55.
https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.103.1.34, 考研: 8650298
Goldstone, 右. (1994). An efficient method for obtaining similarity
数据. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & 电脑,
26, 381–386. https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03204653

开放的心态: 认知科学的发现

432

我

D
哦
w
n
哦
A
d
e
d

F
r
哦
米
H

t
t

p

:
/
/

d
我
r
e
C
t
.

米

我
t
.

/

e
d
你
哦
p
米

我
/

我

A
r
t
我
C
e
–
p
d

F
/

d
哦

我
/

我

/

/

.

1
0
1
1
6
2
哦
p
米
_
A
_
0
0
0
8
9
2
1
4
8
1
3
2
哦
p
米
_
A
_
0
0
0
8
9
p
d

/

.

我

F

乙
y
G
你
e
s
t

t

哦
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
米
乙
e
r
2
0
2
3

Gaps in the Lexicon Restrict Communication

Rissman et al.

Harnad, S. (1996). The origin of words: A psychophysical hypoth-
埃西斯. 在乙. Velichkovsky & D. Rumbaugh (编辑。), Communicating
意义: Evolution and development of language (PP. 27–44).
埃尔鲍姆.

Harrison, K. D. (2007). When languages die: The extinction of
the world’s languages and the erosion of human knowledge.
牛津大学出版社. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso
/9780195181920.001.0001

Hawkins, 右. D ., Frank, 中号. C。, & 古德曼, 氮. D. (2020). Charac-
terizing the dynamics of learning in repeated reference games.
认知科学, 44(6), Article e12845. https://doi.org/10
.1111/cogs.12845, 考研: 32496603

Horton, 瓦. S。, & Gerrig, 右. J. (2002). Speakers’ experiences and
audience design: Knowing when and knowing how to adjust
utterances to addressees. 记忆与语言杂志,
47(4), 589–606. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0749-596X(02)00019-0
房子, J. (2016). Translation as communication across languages
and cultures. 劳特利奇, 泰勒 & 弗朗西斯集团. https://doi.org
/10.4324/9781315668956

Jackson, J. C。, Watts, J。, 亨利, 时间. R。, List, J.-M。, Forkel, R。, Mucha,
磷. J。, Greenhill, S. J。, Gray, 右. D ., & Lindquist, K. A. (2019).
Emotion semantics show both cultural variation and universal
结构. 科学, 366(6472), 1517–1522. https://doi.org/10
.1126/science.aaw8160, 考研: 31857485

Jakobson, 右. (1959). On linguistic aspects of translation. 在R中. A.
Brower (埃德。), On translation (PP. 232–239). 哈佛大学
按. https://doi.org/10.4159/harvard.9780674731615.c18

Kemmerer, D. (2019). Concepts in the brain: The view from cross-
linguistic diversity. 牛津大学出版社. https://doi.org/10
.1093/oso/9780190682620.001.0001

肯普, C。, & Regier, 时间. (2012). Kinship categories across languages
reflect general communicative principles. 科学, 336(6084),
1049–1054. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1218811, 考研:
22628658

肯普, C。, 徐, Y。, & Regier, 时间. (2018). Semantic typology and efficient
沟通. Annual Review of Linguistics, 4(1), 109–128.
https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-linguistics-011817-045406

Kirby, S。, Tamariz, M。, Cornish, H。, & 史密斯, K. (2015). Compres-
sion and communication in the cultural evolution of linguistic
结构. 认识, 141, 87–102. https://doi.org/10.1016/j
.cognition.2015.03.016, 考研: 25966840

Krauss, 右. M。, & Weinheimer, S. (1964). Changes in reference
phrases as a function of frequency of usage in social interaction:
A preliminary study. Psychonomic Science, 1(5), 113–114.
https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03342817

Kumar, A. A。, Steyvers, M。, & Balota, D. A. (2021). Semantic mem-
ory search and retrieval in a novel cooperative word game: A
comparison of associative and distributional semantic models.
认知科学, 45(10), Article e13053. https://doi.org/10
.1111/cogs.13053, 考研: 34622483

Kuznetsova, A。, Brockhoff, 磷. B., & Christensen, 右. H. 乙. (2017).
lmerTest package: Tests in linear mixed effects models. 杂志
of Statistical Software, 82(13), 1–26. https://doi.org/10.18637/jss
.v082.i13

Langacker, 右. 瓦. (1967). Language and its structure: Some funda-

mental linguistic concepts. Harcourt.

Lantz, D ., & Stefflre, V. (1964). Language and cognition revisited. 这
Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 69(5), 472–481.
https://doi.org/10.1037/h0043769, 考研: 14212016

Levelt, 瓦. J。, Roelofs, A。, & 迈耶, A. S. (1999). A theory of lexical
access in speech production. Behavioral and Brain Sciences,
22(1), 1–38. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X99001776,
考研: 11301520

Levinson, S. C。, & Majid, A. (2014). Differential ineffability and the
senses. 头脑 & 语言, 29(4), 407–427. https://doi.org/10
.1111/mila.12057

刘, Q., & Lupyan, G. (2023). Cross-domain semantic alignment:
Concrete concepts are more abstract than you think. Philosoph-
ical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 378(1870), 文章
20210372. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2021.0372, 考研:
36571138

Lucy, J. A。, & Gaskins, S. (2001). Grammatical categories and the
development of classification preferences: A comparative
方法. 在米. Bowerman & S. Levinson (编辑。), 语言
acquisition and conceptual development (PP. 257–283).
C a m b r i d g e U n i v e r s i t y P r e s s . h t t p s : / / d o i . o rg / 1 0 . 1 0 1 7
/CBO9780511620669.011

Lucy, J. A。, & Gaskins, S. (2003). Interaction of language type and
referent type in the development of nonverbal classification
优先. 在D中. Gentner & S. Goldin-Meadow (编辑。), 兰-
guage in mind: Advances in the study of language and thought
(PP. 465–492). Boston Review.

卢克, S. G. (2017). Evaluating significance in linear mixed-effects
models in R. Behavior Research Methods, 49(4), 1494–1502.
https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-016-0809-y, 考研: 27620283
Lupyan, G. (2012). What do words do? Toward a theory of
language-augmented thought. 在乙. H. Ross (埃德。), The psychol-
ogy of learning and motivation (PP. 255–297). 学术出版社.
https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-394293-7.00007-8

Lupyan, G。, Abdel Rahman, R。, Boroditsky, L。, & 克拉克, A. (2020).
Effects of language on visual perception. Trends in Cognitive Sci-
恩塞斯, 24(11), 930–944. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2020.08
.005, 考研: 33012687

Lupyan, G。, & Zettersten, 中号. (2021). Does vocabulary help struc-
ture the mind? 在米. D. Sera & 中号. Koenig (编辑。), Minnesota sym-
posia on child psychology: Human communication: Origins,
mechanisms, and functions (卷. 40, PP. 160–199). 威利.
https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119684527.ch6

Malt, 乙. C。, & Majid, A. (2013). How thought is mapped into
字. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: 认知科学, 4(6),
583–597. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcs.1251, 考研: 26304265
Malt, 乙. C。, Sloman, S. A。, Gennari, S。, Shi, M。, & 王, 是. (1999).
Knowing versus naming: Similarity and the linguistic categori-
zation of artifacts. 记忆与语言杂志, 40(2),
230–262. https://doi.org/10.1006/jmla.1998.2593

Malt, 乙. C。, Sloman, S. A。, & Gennari, S. 磷. (2003). Universality and
language specificity in object naming. Journal of Memory and
语言, 49(1), 20–42. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0749
-596X(03)00021-4

Marslen-Wilson, 瓦. D. (2001). Access to lexical representations:
Cross-linguistic issues. Language and Cognitive Processes,
16(5–6), 699–708. https://doi.org/10.1080/01690960143000164
Mauri, C. (2017). Building and interpreting ad hoc categories: A
linguistic analysis. 在J. Blochowiak, C. Grisot, S. Durrleman, &
C. Laenzlinger (编辑。), Formal models in the study of language:
Applications in interdisciplinary contexts (PP. 297–326).
施普林格. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48832-5_16

Mauri, C。, & Sansò, A. (2018). Linguistic strategies for ad hoc
分类: Theoretical assessment and cross-linguistic
variation. Folia Linguistica, 52, 1–35. https://doi.org/10.1515
/flih-2018-0001

Mihatsch, 瓦. (2007). Taxonomic and meronomic superordinates
with nominal coding. 在一个. C. Schalley & D. Zaefferer (编辑。),
Ontolinguistics: How ontological status shapes the linguistic
coding of concepts (PP. 359–377). Walter de Gruyter. https://
doi.org/10.1515/9783110197792.4.359

开放的心态: 认知科学的发现

433

我

D
哦
w
n
哦
A
d
e
d

F
r
哦
米
H

t
t

p

:
/
/

d
我
r
e
C
t
.

米

我
t
.

/

e
d
你
哦
p
米

我
/

我

A
r
t
我
C
e
–
p
d

F
/

d
哦

我
/

我

/

/

.

1
0
1
1
6
2
哦
p
米
_
A
_
0
0
0
8
9
2
1
4
8
1
3
2
哦
p
米
_
A
_
0
0
0
8
9
p
d

/

.

我

F

乙
y
G
你
e
s
t

t

哦
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
米
乙
e
r
2
0
2
3

Gaps in the Lexicon Restrict Communication

Rissman et al.

Motamedi, Y。, Schouwstra, M。, 史密斯, K., Culbertson, J。, & Kirby, S.
(2019). Evolving artificial sign languages in the lab: From impro-
vised gesture to systematic sign. 认识, 192, 文章 103964.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2019.05.001, 考研:
31302362

Nölle, J。, Staib, M。, Fusaroli, R。, & Tylén, K. (2018). The emergence
of systematicity: How environmental and communicative factors
shape a novel communication system. 认识, 181, 93–104.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2018.08.014, 考研:
30173106

帕卡德, J. L. (2000). The morphology of Chinese: A linguistic and
cognitive approach. 剑桥大学出版社. https://doi.org
/10.1017/CBO9780511486821

匹安多糖, S. T。, Tily, H。, & 吉布森, 乙. (2011). Word lengths are
optimized for efficient communication. 诉讼程序
美国国家科学院, 108(9), 3526–3529. https://土井
.org/10.1073/pnas.1012551108, 考研: 21278332

R核心团队. (2022). 右: 统计语言和环境
计算. R Foundation for Statistical Computing. Retrieved
来自 https://www.R-project.org/.

Raviv, L。, 迈耶, A。, & Lev-Ari, S. (2019). Compositional structure
can emerge without generational transmission. 认识, 182,
151–164. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2018.09.010,
考研: 30267952

Roelofs, A. (1992). A spreading-activation theory of lemma retrieval
in speaking. 认识, 42(1–3), 107–142. https://doi.org/10
.1016/0010-0277(92)90041-F, 考研: 1582154

Rosch, E., Mervis, C. B., Gray, 瓦. D ., 约翰逊, D. M。, & Boyes-Braem,
磷. (1976). Basic objects in natural categories. 认知心理学,
8(3), 382–439. https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0285(76)90013-X
Rubio-Fernandez, P。, & Jara-Ettinger, J. (2020). Incrementality and
efficiency shape pragmatics across languages. 会议记录
the National Academy of Sciences, 117(24), 13399–13404.
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1922067117, 考研: 32482876
Saji, N。, Imai, M。, Saalbach, H。, 张, Y。, Shu, H。, & 冈田, H.
(2011). Word learning does not end at fast-mapping: Evolution of

verb meanings through reorganization of an entire semantic
domain. 认识, 118(1), 45–61. https://doi.org/10.1016/j
.cognition.2010.09.007, 考研: 21074145

斯里尼瓦桑, 中号. (2010). Do classifiers predict differences in cognitive
加工? A study of nominal classification in Mandarin
Chinese. Language and Cognition, 2(2), 177–190. https://土井
.org/10.1515/langcog.2010.007

Suffill, E., Kutasi, T。, 皮克林, 中号. J。, & Branigan, H. 磷. (2021).
Lexical alignment is affected by addressee but not speaker native-
内斯. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 24(4), 746–757.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728921000092

Takatori, Y。, & Schwanenflugel, 磷. J. (1992). Superordinate cate-
gory terms and mass-count noun status. Journal of Linguistic
Anthropology, 2(2), 199–209. https://doi.org/10.1525/jlin.1992
.2.2.199

Tamariz, M。, & Kirby, S. (2016). The cultural evolution of language.
Current Opinion in Psychology, 8, 37–43. https://doi.org/10.1016
/j.copsyc.2015.09.003, 考研: 29506800

汤普森, B., 罗伯茨, S. G。, & Lupyan, G. (2020). Cultural influ-
ences on word meanings revealed through large-scale semantic
结盟. Nature Human Behaviour, 4(10), 1029–1038. https://
doi.org/10.1038/s41562-020-0924-8, 考研: 32778801

特罗特, S。, & 卑尔根, 乙. (2022). Languages are efficient, 但对于
whom? 认识, 225, 文章 105094. https://doi.org/10.1016
/j.cognition.2022.105094, 考研: 35339794

Wisniewski, 乙. J。, Imai, M。, & Casey, L. (1996). On the equiva-
lence of superordinate concepts. 认识, 60(3), 269–298.
https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0277(96)00707-X, 考研:
8870515

Wolff, P。, & Holmes, K. J. (2011). Linguistic relativity. Wiley Interdis-
ciplinary Reviews: 认知科学, 2(3), 253–265. https://土井
.org/10.1002/wcs.104, 考研: 26302074

Zaslavsky, N。, 肯普, C。, Regier, T。, & 蒂什比, 氮. (2018). Efficient
compression in color naming and its evolution. 会议记录
the National Academy of Sciences, 115(31), 7937–7942.
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1800521115, 考研: 30021851

我

D
哦
w
n
哦
A
d
e
d

F
r
哦
米
H

t
t

p

:
/
/

d
我
r
e
C
t
.

米

我
t
.

/

e
d
你
哦
p
米

我
/

我

A
r
t
我
C
e
–
p
d

F
/

d
哦

我
/

我

/

.

/

1
0
1
1
6
2
哦
p
米
_
A
_
0
0
0
8
9
2
1
4
8
1
3
2
哦
p
米
_
A
_
0
0
0
8
9
p
d

.

/

我

F

乙
y
G
你
e
s
t

t

哦
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
米
乙
e
r
2
0
2
3

开放的心态: 认知科学的发现

434

下载pdf