Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Effective categorisation should be simple, to minimise cognitive load, and informative, to maximise communicative effi-ciency. Nominal classification systems (gender, classifiers) are a functional means of categorisation that vary enormouslyacross languages, revealing a trade-off between simplicity and informativeness. Closely related Oceanic languages ofMelanesia show staggering variation in their number and type of classifiers. How does the Iaai language carve up nounsinto 23 semantic groups whilst the Merei language uses only two; and what implications do these vastly different systemshave for the cognitive representations of their related concepts? We combined typological enquiry and psycholinguisticexperimentation (free listing, card sorting, video vignettes, possessive labelling, eye tracking, storyboards, category train-ing) comparing nominal classification systems in six Oceanic languages of Vanuatu and New Caledonia. We discuss howthese experiments uncover the nature of nominal classification systems, comparing objective data across languages andexperimental contexts to reveal a model for optimal categorisation.