Do dependency lengths explain constraints on crossing dependencies?

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F00216208%3A11320%2F21%3A10439975" target="_blank" >RIV/00216208:11320/21:10439975 - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

<a href="https://verso.is.cuni.cz/pub/verso.fpl?fname=obd_publikace_handle&handle=YUxeBaCY3P" target="_blank" >https://verso.is.cuni.cz/pub/verso.fpl?fname=obd_publikace_handle&handle=YUxeBaCY3P</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/lingvan-2019-0070" target="_blank" >10.1515/lingvan-2019-0070</a>

Result language

angličtina

Original language name

Do dependency lengths explain constraints on crossing dependencies?

Original language description

In syntactic dependency trees, when arcs are drawn from syntactic heads to dependents, they rarely cross. Constraints on these crossing dependencies are critical for determining the syntactic properties of human language, because they define the position of natural language in formal language hierarchies. We study whether the apparent constraints on crossing syntactic dependencies in natural language might be explained by constraints on dependency lengths (the linear distance between heads and dependents). We compare real dependency trees from treebanks of 52 languages against baselines of random trees which are matched with the real trees in terms of their dependency lengths. We find that these baseline trees have many more crossing dependencies than real trees, indicating that a constraint on dependency lengths alone cannot explain the empirical rarity of crossing dependencies. However, we find evidence that a combined constraint on dependency length and the rate of crossing dependencies might be able to explain two of the most-studied formal restrictions on dependency trees: gap degree and well-nestedness.

Czech name

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Czech description

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Type

J_imp - Article in a specialist periodical, which is included in the Web of Science database

CEP classification

—

OECD FORD branch

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

Project

—

Continuities

—

Publication year

2021

Confidentiality

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

Name of the periodical

Linguistics Vanguard [online]

ISSN

2199-174X

e-ISSN

—

Volume of the periodical

7

Issue of the periodical within the volume

3

Country of publishing house

DE - GERMANY

Number of pages

15

Pages from-to

20190070

UT code for WoS article

000646171200003

EID of the result in the Scopus database

2-s2.0-85105738408