What’s in a name? Computational modeling and experimental investigations on the non-arbitrariness of word label choices

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It is traditionally assumed that words are assigned to concepts as arbitrary labels. In reality however, labels are always selected in a specific linguistic, historical, and social context, which informs and restricts label choices: For example, the existence of the word “phone” makes it very sensible to use the word “mobile phone” for a portable phone. On the other hand, labels almost always bring with them certain connotations and implications: the German “Völkerwanderung” describes the exact same concept as the Italian “invasione barbariche”, but the associations are quite different. In the project proposed here, we plan to investigate both sides of this phenomenon – why do we pick the labels we choose, and what are the consequences of these choices – from a cognitive point of view. To this end, central properties of both existing and novel words – related to their form and especially their meaning – will be represented in an objective and quantitative manner, by employing recent developments from the artificial intelligence field of natural language processing. Thus, combining computational modelling techniques with experimental methodology from general and social psychology, the present project aims at establishing a comprehensive theoretical framework for the choice and implications of word labels. The project consists of three major work packages. The studies of the first work package investigate when and which new word labels are coined by speakers. On the one hand, this includes examining the concept properties and contexts that lead speakers to generate a new label for a given concept. On the other hand, it includes predicting which labels are chosen, with the aim of establishing a computational model for the goodness/adequacy of labels given a concept. The methods of the first work package range from large-scale corpus studies over observation of natural communication to various signaling game-paradigms. The studies of the second work package examine direct social influences on label choices, since labels are always a social convention of a speaker community. The main factors of interest here are variables connected to the interaction partners in a social setting where both partners start with different labels for the same concept (such as their willingness to accept new labels, or their social status). The studies of this work package thus employ methods from social psychology in personal communication settings to examine how such social factors interact with the “goodness of labels” to determine which label is finally adapted by a speaker.Finally, the studies of the third work package investigate the implications and connotations of labels, in terms of semantic association, affective evaluation, and sensory perception. In these studies, where different labels for the very same concept will be presented to different speakers, we aim at predicting the connotations from the quantitative properties of the word labels.