Human languages order information efficiently

Abstract

Most languages use the relative order between words to encode meaning relations. Languages differ, however, in what orders they use and how these orders are mapped onto different meanings. We test the hypothesis that, despite these differences, human languages might constitute different `solutions' to common pressures of language use. Using Monte Carlo simulations over data from five languages, we find that their word orders are efficient for processing in terms of both dependency length and local lexical probability. This suggests that biases originating in how the brain understands language strongly constrain how human languages change over generations.