Why does negation of the predicate shorten a clause?

Result code in IS VaVaI
<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F61988987%3A17250%2F22%3AA2302HYY" target="_blank" >RIV/61988987:17250/22:A2302HYY - isvavai.cz</a>
Result on the web
<a href="https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110763560/html#overview" target="_blank" >https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110763560/html#overview</a>
DOI - Digital Object Identifier
<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/9783110763560-001" target="_blank" >10.1515/9783110763560-001</a>

Result language
angličtina
Original language name
Why does negation of the predicate shorten a clause?
Original language description
According to the Menzerath-Altmann law, the mean word length isgreater in shorter clauses than in longer ones. In Czech, negation is mostly realized by adding the prefix ne- to the beginning of the word, which makes theword longer (and, consequently, it also increases the mean word length in theclause). Therefore, we predict that clauses in which the predicate is in the affirmative form are longer than ones with the negative predicate. We test the hypothesis on a sample of 59 pairs of affirmative and negative forms of the sameverb from the Prague Dependency Treebank 3.0.
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
2022
Confidentiality
S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Book/collection name
Quantitative Approaches to Universality and Individuality in Language
ISBN
9783110628081
Number of pages of the result
9
Pages from-to
1-9
Number of pages of the book
240
Publisher name
de Gruyter
Place of publication
Berlin/Boston
UT code for WoS chapter
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