Language Learnability with Relation to the Size of Population and Pre-Determined ‎Structure‎

Abstract

Languages that evolved in both large and small groups were equally learnable, and languages produced by larger groups gained no additional advantage beyond their degree of systematic structure. Therefore, community size had no bearing on language learnability. Furthermore, participants who learned more structured languages were better at generalizing these languages to new, unfamiliar meanings, and different participants who learned the same more structured languages were more likely to produce similar labels, indicating that predictability is a significant benefit of systematic structure. In other words, speakers may easily converge with a systematic structure, making it possible for complete strangers to comprehend one another right away.‎ Morphological complexity variations between languages may have significant effects on language acquisition. More specifically, it's a common belief that children and adults can learn languages more easily if they have more regular, compositional, and transparent grammars. Furthermore, research indicates that larger societies are more likely to see the evolution of these grammars. Taken together, these findings imply that certain languages are picked up more quickly than others, and that the reason for this advantage can be linked to the size of the language's population and level of systematicity. Though it may be significant for theories on language evolution, second language acquisition, and the emergence of linguistic diversity, the causal relationship between systematic linguistic structure and language learnability has not been systematically examined. The impacts of population size and systematic structure on adult language learning were empirically investigated in this study. In a prior communication experiment, we compared the acquisition of various artificial languages that were comparable and generated by large or small groups. The artificial languages varied in terms of how systematic their linguistic structure was. We inquired about the ease of learning two things: (a) more organized languages and (b) languages produced by larger communities. We discovered that adults learned highly systematic languages more quickly and accurately, but that there was typically a non-linear relationship between language learnability and linguistic structure: learners benefited from high systematicity, but they did not benefit from partially or semi-structured languages.‎