On the origin of ambiguity in efficient communication

DOI10.1007/S10849-013-9179-3MaRDI QIDQ2255220zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Jordi Fortuny, Bernat Corominas-Murtra

Publication date 9 February 2015

Published in Journal of Logic, Language and Information (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1107.0193

zbMATH Keywords

ambiguitycommunicative efficiencylogical (ir)reversibilityShannon's entropy

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Coding and information theory (compaction, compression, models of communication, encoding schemes, etc.) (aspects in computer science) (68P30) Information theory (general) (94A15) Measures of information, entropy (94A17)

Abstract: This article studies the emergence of ambiguity in communication through the concept of logical irreversibility and within the framework of Shannon's information theory. This leads us to a precise and general expression of the intuition behind Zipf's vocabulary balance in terms of a symmetry equation between the complexities of the coding and the decoding processes that imposes an unavoidable amount of logical uncertainty in natural communication. Accordingly, the emergence of irreversible computations is required if the complexities of the coding and the decoding processes are balanced in a symmetric scenario, which means that the emergence of ambiguous codes is a necessary condition for natural communication to succeed.

Recommendations

• Least effort and the origins of scaling in human language
• Ambiguity advantage under meaning activation
• The physical character of information
• Analysis of an information-theoretic model for communication
• Excess entropy in natural language: present state and perspectives

Cites work

• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 52032 (Why is no real title available?)
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 107482 (Why is no real title available?)
• Irreversibility and Heat Generation in the Computing Process
• Least effort and the origins of scaling in human language
• Logical Reversibility of Computation
• Maximum entropy fundamentals
• Notes on Landauer's principle, reversible computation, and Maxwell's demon
• The connection between logical and thermodynamic irreversibility

Cited in

(2)

• Public and private communication are different: Results on relative expressivity
• Ambiguity and communication

This page was built for publication: On the origin of ambiguity in efficient communication

Report a bug (only for logged in users!)Click here to report a bug for this page (MaRDI item Q2255220)