Cross-linguistic Dependency Length Minimization in scientific language: Syntactic complexity reduction in English and German in the Late Modern period

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F00216208%3A11320%2F25%3ALK4QGNMN" target="_blank" >RIV/00216208:11320/25:LK4QGNMN - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

<a href="https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85185763986&doi=10.1075%2flic.00038.kri&partnerID=40&md5=e2db865bca92b244cf55d24fd66ad178" target="_blank" >https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85185763986&doi=10.1075%2flic.00038.kri&partnerID=40&md5=e2db865bca92b244cf55d24fd66ad178</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/lic.00038.kri" target="_blank" >10.1075/lic.00038.kri</a>

Result language

angličtina

Original language name

Cross-linguistic Dependency Length Minimization in scientific language: Syntactic complexity reduction in English and German in the Late Modern period

Original language description

We use Universal Dependencies (UD) for the study of cross-linguistic diachronic syntactic complexity reduction. Specifically, we look at whether and how scientific English and German minimize the length of syntactic dependency relations in the Late Modern period (ca. 1650-1900). Our linguistic analysis follows the assumption that over time, scientific discourse cross-linguistically develops towards an increasingly efficient syntactic code by minimizing Dependency Length (DL) as a factor of syntactic complexity. For each language, we analyse a large UD-annotated scientific and general language corpus for comparison. While on a macro level, our analysis suggests that there is an overall diachronic cross-linguistic and cross-register reduction in Average Dependency Length (ADL), on the micro level we find that only scientific language shows a sentence length independent reduction of ADL, while general language shows an overall decrease of ADL due to sentence length reduction. We further analyse the syntactic constructions responsible for this reduction in both languages, showing that both scientific English and German increasingly make use of short, intraphrasal dependency relations while long dependency relations such as clausal embeddings become rather disfavoured over time. © John Benjamins Publishing Company.

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

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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

2024

Confidentiality

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

Name of the periodical

Languages in Contrast

ISSN

1387-6759

e-ISSN

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Volume of the periodical

24

Issue of the periodical within the volume

1

Country of publishing house

US - UNITED STATES

Number of pages

31

Pages from-to

133-163

UT code for WoS article

001163674700002

EID of the result in the Scopus database

2-s2.0-85185763986