How communicatively optimal are exact numeral systems? Once more on lexicon size and morphosyntactic complexity

A research team led by Chundra Cathcart and nine other authors has published a significant computational linguistics paper titled 'How communicatively optimal are exact numeral systems? Once more on lexicon size and morphosyntactic complexity' on arXiv. The study challenges recent research suggesting that exact recursive numeral systems optimize communicative efficiency by balancing a tradeoff between the size of the numeral lexicon and the average morphosyntactic complexity of numeral terms. The researchers argue that previous studies failed to properly account for the degree of complexity languages actually display, leading to incomplete conclusions about linguistic optimization.

The team analyzed data from 52 genetically diverse languages using an annotation scheme that distinguishes between predictable and unpredictable allomorphy (formal variation in word forms). Their findings show that many of the world's languages are decisively less efficient than one would expect if numeral systems were truly optimized for communication. This research has important implications for the study of numeral systems specifically and linguistic evolution more broadly, suggesting that factors beyond communicative efficiency may play significant roles in how numeral systems develop and persist across languages.