I am never impressed by “I am not convinced that X is practically useful, therefore X must really be all about signalling”
I don’t mean to claim it is 100% necessarily about signaling, however I do mean to claim that A) there’s a solid argument to believe that signaling plays a role, and B) that the “naïve obvious” answer has very little to do with it. (Regardless of whether you are convinced, this is the main claim of the post, and I stand by this claim) There could very well be other reasons that I haven’t considered which make a large vocabulary useful that don’t have to do with signaling, I don’t know.
I am aware that I haven’t proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that my claims are true, but I have given both a theoretical justification and actual examples that illustrate something that is interesting (according to me) and counterintuitive, which is more than enough to justify making a post here.
I don’t mean to claim it is 100% necessarily about signaling, however I do mean to claim that A) there’s a solid argument to believe that signaling plays a role, and B) that the “naïve obvious” answer has very little to do with it. (Regardless of whether you are convinced, this is the main claim of the post, and I stand by this claim) There could very well be other reasons that I haven’t considered which make a large vocabulary useful that don’t have to do with signaling, I don’t know.
I am aware that I haven’t proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that my claims are true, but I have given both a theoretical justification and actual examples that illustrate something that is interesting (according to me) and counterintuitive, which is more than enough to justify making a post here.