Information-theoretic locality properties of natural language

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F00216208%3A11320%2F19%3A10427146" target="_blank" >RIV/00216208:11320/19:10427146 - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

<a href="https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/W19-7902" target="_blank" >https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/W19-7902</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

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Result language

angličtina

Original language name

Information-theoretic locality properties of natural language

Original language description

I present theoretical arguments and new empirical evidence for an information-theoretic principleof word order: information locality, the idea that words that strongly predict each other shouldbe close to each other in linear order. I show that information locality can be derived underthe assumption that natural language is a code that enables efficient communication while minimizinginformation-processing costs involved in online language comprehension, using recentpsycholinguistic theories to characterize those processing costs information-theoretically. I arguethat information locality subsumes and extends the previously-proposed principle of dependencylength minimization (DLM), which has shown great explanatory power for predicting word orderin many languages. Finally, I show corpus evidence that information locality has improved explanatorypower over DLM in two domains: in predicting which dependencies will have shorterand longer lengths across 50 languages, and in predicting the preferred order of adjectives inEnglish.

Czech name

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Czech description

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Type

O - Miscellaneous

CEP classification

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OECD FORD branch

10201 - Computer sciences, information science, bioinformathics (hardware development to be 2.2, social aspect to be 5.8)

Project

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Continuities

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Publication year

2019

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů