Quantitative Linguistics

Těšitelová, Marie

doi:10.1075/llsee.37

Cited by 26 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Quantitative methods have proved extremely powerful in the field of linguistics, for example revealing shared fundamental properties of geographically and morphologically diverse languages, which are not revealed by qualitative approaches (60,61). The full power of linguistic laws may, however, extend far beyond the field in which they were developed (4, 5).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gelada vocal sequences follow Menzerath’s linguistic law

Gustison

Semple

Ferrer-i-Cancho

et al. 2016

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

152

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Identifying universal principles underpinning diverse natural systems is a key goal of the life sciences. A powerful approach in addressing this goal has been to test whether patterns consistent with linguistic laws are found in nonhuman animals. Menzerath's law is a linguistic law that states that, the larger the construct, the smaller the size of its constituents. Here, to our knowledge, we present the first evidence that Menzerath's law holds in the vocal communication of a nonhuman species. We show that, in vocal sequences of wild male geladas (Theropithecus gelada), construct size (sequence size in number of calls) is negatively correlated with constituent size (duration of calls). Call duration does not vary significantly with position in the sequence, but call sequence composition does change with sequence size and most call types are abbreviated in larger sequences. We also find that intercall intervals follow the same relationship with sequence size as do calls. Finally, we provide formal mathematical support for the idea that Menzerath's law reflects compression-the principle of minimizing the expected length of a code. Our findings suggest that a common principle underpins human and gelada vocal communication, highlighting the value of exploring the applicability of linguistic laws in vocal systems outside the realm of language.communication | language | primate | Menzerath | Zipf

show abstract

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gelada vocal sequences follow Menzerath’s linguistic law

Gustison

Semple

Ferrer-i-Cancho

et al. 2016

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

152

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The information entropy of a message can be understood as the amount of information the message contains, and Shannon developed a way to measure this. His insights seem to have gone almost completely unnoticed by the field of quantitative linguistics except for a brief period during the 1950s–1960s when Herdan (1958) noted a mathematical relationship between Yule's and Shannon's indices, and when a small number of other quantitative linguists attempted to apply Shannon's ideas to the quantification of redundancy (see Těšitelová, 1992, pp. 65–66).…”

Section: Route 1: the Path Of Quantitative Linguisticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Capturing the Diversity in Lexical Diversity

Jarvis

2013

Language Learning

169

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The range, variety, or diversity of words found in learners’ language use is believed to reflect the complexity of their vocabulary knowledge as well as the level of their language proficiency. Many indices of lexical diversity have been proposed, most of which involve statistical relationships between types and tokens, and which ultimately reflect the rate of word repetition. These indices have generally been validated in accordance with how well they overcome sample‐size effects and/or how well they predict language knowledge or behavior, rather than in accordance with how well they actually measure the construct of lexical diversity. In this article, I review developments that have taken place in lexical diversity research, and also describe obstacles that have prevented it from advancing further. I compare these developments with parallel research on biodiversity in the field of ecology, and show what language researchers can learn from ecology regarding the modeling and measurement of diversity as a multidimensional construct of compositional complexity.

show abstract

“…The statistical methods we use rely on independent random selections, but we use cluster sampling, that is, each word and sentence is not chosen independently from all other words and sentences. However, other empirical results, specifically for text analysis, show that cluster selection of a total of 500-3000 words is enough for a representative sample for many types of linguistic analyses, both about words and about sentences (Tesitelová, 1992). Therefore, we draw the conclusion that our sample sizes are suitable for analyses of properties of words and sentences.…”

Section: Methods Of Analysismentioning

confidence: 81%