Simple stochastic processes behind Menzerath’s Law

Result code in IS VaVaI
<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F00216208%3A11210%2F25%3A10507826" target="_blank" >RIV/00216208:11210/25:10507826 - isvavai.cz</a>
Result on the web
<a href="https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.370.04mil" target="_blank" >https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.370.04mil</a>
DOI - Digital Object Identifier
<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/cilt.370.04mil" target="_blank" >10.1075/cilt.370.04mil</a>

Result language
angličtina
Original language name
Simple stochastic processes behind Menzerath’s Law
Original language description
This paper revisits Menzerath's Law, also known as the Menzerath-Altmann Law, which models a relationship between the length of a linguistic construct and the average length of its constituents. Recent findings indicate that simple stochastic processes can display Menzerathian behaviour, though existing models fail to accurately reflect real-world data.If we adopt the basic principle that a word can change its length in both syllables and phonemes, where the correlation between these variables is not perfect and these changes are of a multiplicative nature, we get a bivariate log-normal distribution. The present paper shows, that from this very simple principle, we obtain the classic Altmann model of the Menzerath-Altmann Law.If we model the joint distribution separately and independently from the marginal distributions, we can obtain an even more accurate model by using a Gaussian copula. The models are confronted with empirical data, and alternative approaches are discussed.
Czech name
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Czech description
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Project
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Continuities
I - Institucionalni podpora na dlouhodoby koncepcni rozvoj vyzkumne organizace

Publication year
2025
Confidentiality
S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

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