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

Kód výsledku v 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>

Výsledek na webu

<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>

Jazyk výsledku

angličtina

Název v původním jazyce

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

Popis výsledku v původním jazyce

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.

Název v anglickém jazyce

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

Popis výsledku anglicky

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.

Druh

J_imp - Článek v periodiku v databázi Web of Science

CEP obor

—

OECD FORD obor

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

Projekt

—

Návaznosti

—

Rok uplatnění

2024

Kód důvěrnosti údajů

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

Název periodika

Languages in Contrast

ISSN

1387-6759

e-ISSN

—

Svazek periodika

24

Číslo periodika v rámci svazku

1

Stát vydavatele periodika

US - Spojené státy americké

Počet stran výsledku

31

Strana od-do

133-163

Kód UT WoS článku

001163674700002

EID výsledku v databázi Scopus

2-s2.0-85185763986