How the principle of economy shapes language

Traditionally, the principle of economy has been considered a
secondary principle in mainstream linguistics. Here we will argue that
economy is a crucial factor for explaining some universal properties
of human language such as Zipf's law for word frequencies or the absence
of crossings of syntactic dependencies. In particular, we will argue
that Zipf's law could be the optimal solution for communicating in the
vicinities of a continuous phase transition. In particular, we will
argue that the absence of crossings of syntactic dependencies is a side
effect of a locality principle that is in turn a consequence of pressure
for economy. We will also argue that human language could have
originated for free as a side effect of percolation in the network of
signal-stimulus mappings and that this phenomenon could be induced by
economy again. This results suggest that the principle of economy
cannot be considered an improvement over existent views of language but
part of the core of any solid theory of language.