The interaction of meaning similarity and confusability explains regularity in form–meaning mappings at and below the word level

Languages exhibit striking regularities in how meanings are mapped to word forms, yet analogous patterns at the subword level remain under-explored. This study presents a large-scale cross-linguistic analysis of regularity at and below the word level, drawing on data from over 1,900 languages. Here we find that while the co-expression of meanings at both levels is highly systematic, the meanings recurrently involved in the two levels differ. Nevertheless, regularity at and below the word level is explained by the same underlying principle: a tension between pressure for lexical compression and lexical differentiation. The former favours reusing forms for similar meanings to ease learning and processing. The latter favours the use of distinct forms to prevent ambiguity. These findings offer a unified account of lexical organization across the world’s languages, with subword-level form reuse emerging as a principled compromise when full word-level reuse risks miscommunication. Languages exhibit striking regularities in how meanings are mapped to word forms, yet analogous patterns at the subword level remain under-explored. This study fills the gap with a large-scale cross-linguistic analysis of regularity at and below the word level, drawing on data from over 1,900 languages.