Quantifying Syntactic Complexity in Czech Texts: An Analysis of Mean Dependency Distance and Average Sentence Length Across Genres

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F61988987%3A17250%2F24%3AA250385U" target="_blank" >RIV/61988987:17250/24:A250385U - isvavai.cz</a>

Alternative codes found

RIV/00216208:11320/25:YDKMBR5R

Result on the web

<a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09296174.2024.2370459" target="_blank" >https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09296174.2024.2370459</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09296174.2024.2370459" target="_blank" >10.1080/09296174.2024.2370459</a>

Result language

angličtina

Original language name

Quantifying Syntactic Complexity in Czech Texts: An Analysis of Mean Dependency Distance and Average Sentence Length Across Genres

Original language description

This study investigates the syntactic complexity of various text-types in the Czech language by analysing the mean dependency distance (MDD), a measure that quantifies the average distance between syntactic heads and their dependents within a sentence, and average sentence length (ASL). Using data from the SYN2020 corpus, a large and balanced collection of contemporary written Czech, we calculate the MDD and ASL for different text-types. Our findings reveal distinct patterns in the MDD and ASL values across genres, suggesting that syntactic complexity varies among different types of texts. We observe a clear distinction between fiction and non-fiction genres, with fiction exhibiting lower MDD and ASL values, indicating a more compact syntactic structure. Non-fiction genres, particularly scientific literature, display higher MDD and ASL values, reflecting more complex syntactic constructions. Journalistic texts, such as newspapers and magazines, fall between fiction and non-fiction in terms of MDD and ASL values. These results demonstrate the potential of MDD and ASL as quantitative measures for characterizing and differentiating text-types based on their syntactic complexity. Furthermore, our analysis contributes to a deeper understanding of the syntactic variations across diverse genres in the Czech language.

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

60203 - Linguistics

Project

<a href="/en/project/GA22-20632S" target="_blank" >GA22-20632S: Quantitative Syntactic Stylistics of Contemporary Written Czech</a><br>

Continuities

P - Projekt vyzkumu a vyvoje financovany z verejnych zdroju (s odkazem do CEP)

Publication year

2024

Confidentiality

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

Name of the periodical

Journal of Quantitative Linguistics

ISSN

0929-6174

e-ISSN

1744-5035

Volume of the periodical

—

Issue of the periodical within the volume

3

Country of publishing house

GB - UNITED KINGDOM

Number of pages

14

Pages from-to

260-273

UT code for WoS article

001259286900001

EID of the result in the Scopus database

2-s2.0-85197575977