WERE THIS article written in Japanese, it would be longer. A Thai translation, meanwhile, would be shorter. And yet those reading it aloud, in either language or in its original English, would finish at roughly the same time. This peculiar phenomenon is the subject of new research which finds that languages face a trade-off between complexity and speed. Those packed with information are spoken slower, while simpler ones are spoken faster. As a result, most languages are equally efficient at conveying information. [...]
The results suggest that there is an optimal range of speeds within which the brain can process information most efficiently. Speakers of simple languages pick up the pace to keep conversations brief. Speakers of complex languages exert more effort planning sentences and articulating syllables, causing discussions to drag on. Yet in both cases, information is conveyed at about the same pace. “It is like bird wings,” says Dr Coupé, one of the authors, “you may have big ones that need few beats per second or you have to really flap the little ones you got, but the result is pretty much the same in terms of flying.”
No comments:
Post a Comment