Universal Topological Regularities of Syntactic Structures: Decoupling Efficiency from Optimization
This addresses the problem of understanding the origins of syntactic structures in linguistics, showing that communicative efficiency may not require optimization, which is incremental in clarifying language evolution mechanisms.
The study discovered a universal regularity where syntactic structures across 124 languages are communicatively efficient above chance, revealing that this efficiency can arise from optimization or a sublinear preferential attachment process, with the latter offering a better explanation.
Human syntactic structures are usually represented as graphs. Much research has focused on the mapping between such graphs and linguistic sequences, but less attention has been paid to the shapes of the graphs themselves: their topologies. This study investigates how the topologies of syntactic graphs reveal traces of the processes that led to their emergence. I report a new universal regularity in syntactic structures: Their topology is communicatively efficient above chance. The pattern holds, without exception, for all 124 languages studied, across linguistic families and modalities (spoken, written, and signed). This pattern can arise from a process optimizing for communicative efficiency or, alternatively, by construction, as a by-effect of a sublinear preferential attachment process reflecting language production mechanisms known from psycholinguistics. This dual explanation shows how communicative efficiency, per se, does not require optimization. Among the two options, efficiency without optimization offers the better explanation for the new pattern.