Inherent and probabilistic naturalness.
Standard accounts hold that regularities of behavior must be arbitrary to constitute a convention. Yet, there is growing consensus that conventionality is a graded phenomenon, and that conventions can be more or less natural. I develop an account of natural conventions that distinguishes two basic d...
| Publicado en: | Philosophical Studies Vol. 181; no. 2/3; pp. 369 - 386 |
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| Formato: | Artículo |
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Springer Nature
Mar2024
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=175695396&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 175695396 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 00318116 4L8 jtl: Philosophical Studies issn: 00318116 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Mar2024 vid: 181 iid: 2/3 pid: 237 pub: Springer Nature artinfo: ui: 175695396 10.1007/s11098-023-02070-x ppf: 369 ppct: 17 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: P size: 750KB tig: atl: Inherent and probabilistic naturalness. aug: au: Gasparri, Luca affil: Univ. Lille, CNRS, UMR 8163 - STL - Savoirs Textes Langage, F-59000, Lille, France su: Oral communication Vocabulary Naturalness (Linguistics) Semantics Perturbation theory sug: subj: Oral communication Vocabulary Naturalness (Linguistics) Semantics Perturbation theory keyword: Arbitrariness Conventions Language Naturalness Probability ab: Standard accounts hold that regularities of behavior must be arbitrary to constitute a convention. Yet, there is growing consensus that conventionality is a graded phenomenon, and that conventions can be more or less natural. I develop an account of natural conventions that distinguishes two basic dimensions of conventional naturalness: a probabilistic dimension and an inherent one. A convention is probabilistically natural if it is likely to emerge in a population of agents, and inherently natural if its content is a regularity that scores high on relevant measures for naturalness. I motivate the proposal on conceptual grounds and then showcase its descriptive benefits by discussing two case studies in language: the tendency towards word-length optimality and the prevalence of shape opacity in spoken language vocabularies. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Philosophical Studies is a copyright of Springer, 2024. All Rights Reserved. item: Philosophical Studies holder: Springer Nature dt: @attributes: year: 2024 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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