Semantic uncertainty guides the extension of conventions to new
  referents
Ron Eliav Anya Ji Yoav Artzi Robert D. Hawkins
A long tradition of studies in psycholinguistics has examined the formation
and generalization of ad hoc conventions in reference games, showing how newly
acquired conventions for a given target transfer to new referential contexts.
However, another axis of generalization remains understudied: how do
conventions formed for one target transfer to completely distinct targets, when
specific lexical choices are unlikely to repeat? This paper presents two dyadic
studies (N = 240) that address this axis of generalization, focusing on the
role of nameability -- the a priori likelihood that two individuals will share
the same label. We leverage the recently-released KiloGram dataset, a
collection of abstract tangram images that is orders of magnitude larger than
previously available, exhibiting high diversity of properties like nameability.
Our first study asks how nameability shapes convention formation, while the
second asks how new conventions generalize to entirely new targets of
reference. Our results raise new questions about how ad hoc conventions extend
beyond target-specific re-use of specific lexical choices.