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

Nature Human Behaviour, Published online: 15 June 2026; doi:10.1038/s41562-026-02488-3 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.