It is often assumed that cross-linguistically more prevalent distinctions are easier to learn (Typological Prevalence Hypothesis; TPH). Prior work supports this idea in phonology, morphology and syntax but has not addressed semantics. Using Artificial Language Learning experiments with adults, we test predictions made by the TPH about the relative learnability of semantic distinctions in the domain of evidentiality, i.e., the linguistic encoding of information source. As the TPH predicted, when exposed to miniature evidential morphological systems, adult speakers of English whose language does not encode evidentiality grammatically learned the typologically most prevalent system (marking indirect, reportative information) better compared to less-attested systems (Experiments 1-2). Similar patterns were observed when non-linguistic symbols were used to encode evidential distinctions (Experiment 3). Our data support the conjecture that some semantic distinctions are marked preferentially and acquired more easily compared to others in both language and other symbolic systems.

中文翻译：

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跨语言频率和语义的可学习性：证据的人工语言学习研究。

通常认为跨语言更普遍的区别更容易学习（类型流行假设；TPH）。先前的工作在音韵学、形态学和句法方面支持这个想法，但没有涉及语义。使用成人的人工语言学习实验，我们测试了 TPH 对证据领域中语义区别的相对可学习性的预测，即信息源的语言编码。正如 TPH 预测的那样，当接触微型证据形态系统时，与较少证明的系统相比，语言不编码证据的成年英语母语者在语法上学习了类型学上最普遍的系统（标记间接的报告信息）（实验 1-2） . 当使用非语言符号对证据区别进行编码时，观察到类似的模式（实验 3）。我们的数据支持这样的猜想，即在语言和其他符号系统中，与其他语义区别相比，某些语义区别被优先标记并且更容易获得。