Cognitive and Cultural Topology of Linguistic Categories:A Semantic-Pragmatic Metric Approach

Abstract

In recent years, the field of NLP has seen growing interest in modeling both semantic and pragmatic dimensions. Despite this progress, two key challenges persist: firstly, the complex task of mapping and analyzing the interactions between semantic and pragmatic features; secondly, the insufficient incorporation of relevant insights from related disciplines outside NLP. Addressing these issues, this study introduces a novel geometric metric that utilizes word co-occurrence patterns. This metric maps two fundamental properties - semantic typicality (cognitive) and pragmatic salience (socio-cultural) - for basic-level categories within a two-dimensional hyperbolic space. Our evaluations reveal that this semantic-pragmatic metric produces mappings for basic-level categories that not only surpass traditional cognitive semantics benchmarks but also demonstrate significant socio-cultural relevance. This finding proposes that basic-level categories, traditionally viewed as semantics-driven cognitive constructs, should be examined through the lens of both semantic and pragmatic dimensions, highlighting their role as a cognitive-cultural interface. The broad contribution of this paper lies in the development of medium-sized, interpretable, and human-centric language embedding models, which can effectively blend semantic and pragmatic dimensions to elucidate both the cognitive and socio-cultural significance of linguistic categories.