Verbs of letting in Germanic and Romance languages

Levshina, Natalia

doi:10.1075/lic.16.1.04lev

Cited by 19 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…42,66,67 In particular, we focus on the wide class of compressors that consist of an LM and an entropy coder: the LM generates predicted probabilities 𝑝𝑝�𝑡𝑡 𝑁𝑁 = 𝑠𝑠 𝑗𝑗 |𝑡𝑡 1 𝑁𝑁−1 � for the upcoming symbols given the past that are then taken by the entropy coder to perform compression by coding symbols with code length − log 𝑝𝑝�𝑡𝑡 𝑁𝑁 = 𝑠𝑠 𝑗𝑗 |𝑡𝑡 1 𝑁𝑁−1 �. 7,68 Leveraging available corpora and multilingual text collections [69][70][71][72] , we compiled a database of parallel texts comprising a large variety of different text types, e.g. religious texts, legalese texts, subtitles for various movies and talks, and machine translations.…”

Section: Estimating Entropy As a Measure Of Average Prediction Comple...mentioning

confidence: 99%

A large quantitative analysis of written language challenges the idea that all languages are equally complex

Koplenig

Wolfer

Meyer

2023

Preprint

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One of the fundamental questions about human language is whether all languages are equally complex. Here, we approach this question from an information-theoretic perspective. We present a large scale quantitative cross-linguistic analysis of written language by training a language model on more than 6,500 different documents as represented in 41 multilingual text collections consisting of ~3.5 billion words or ~9.0 billion characters and covering 2,069 different languages that are spoken as a native language by more than 90% of the world population. We statistically infer the entropy of each language model as an index of what we call average prediction complexity. We compare complexity rankings across corpora and show that a language that tends to be more complex than another language in one corpus also tends to be more complex in another corpus. In addition, we show that speaker population size predicts entropy. We argue that both results constitute evidence against the equi-complexity hypothesis from an information-theoretic perspective.

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Section: Estimating Entropy As a Measure Of Average Prediction Comple...mentioning

confidence: 99%

A large quantitative analysis of written language challenges the idea that all languages are equally complex

Koplenig

Wolfer

Meyer

2023

Preprint

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“…For example, the quantitative token-based corpus analysis in van der Auwera et al (2012) demonstrates that Dutch is intermediate between English and German with regard to impersonalization strategies, whereas their analysis at the level of types does not allow for such a conclusion. In a similar vein, the author's own study (Levshina 2016) shows that the functions of verbs of "letting" in Romance and Germanic languages are distributed in a way that suggests the presence of an areal North-South continuum. The differences between the neighboring languages are quantitative, rather than qualitative, and can be pinned down only at the level of tokens.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 85%

Why we need a token-based typology: A case study of analytic and lexical causatives in fifteen European languages

Levshina

2016

Folia Linguistica

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This paper investigates variation of lexical and analytic causatives in 15 European languages from the Germanic, Romance, and Slavic genera based on a multilingual parallel corpus of film subtitles. Using typological parameters of variation of causatives from the literature, this study tests which parameters are relevant for the choice between analytic and lexical causatives in the sample of languages. The main research question is whether the variation is constrained by one semantic dimension, namely, the conceptual integration of the causing and caused events, as suggested by previous research on iconicity in language, or whether several different semantic and syntactic factors are at play. To answer this question, I use an exploratory multivariate technique for categorical data (Multiple Correspondence Analysis with supplementary points) and conditional random forests, a nonparametric regression and classification method. The study demonstrates the importance of corpus data in testing typological hypotheses.

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“…French laisser, Spanish dejar). In addition, these verbs have developed various more language-specific uses (Viberg 2009;see Rawoens 2008 andLevshina 2016 for a detailed discussion of the causative uses). The use of the verb of letting as a sensory copula is very language-specific.…”

Section: Auditory Sensory Copulasmentioning

confidence: 99%

Phenomenon-Based Perception Verbs in Swedish from a Typological and Contrastive Perspective

Viberg¹

2020

Syntaxe &Amp; Sémantique

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The article starts with a brief review of current studies of perception verbs as a background to the major part of the paper, which is devoted to a discussion of Phenomenon-based perception verbs. Three broad types are distinguished: sensory copulas, perceptibility verbs and sensory verbs. Verbs of these types appear across the five sense modalities. The categorization is tested on data from a translation corpus consisting of Swedish original novels translated into English, German, French and Finnish. The paper focuses on vision and audition, in particular the Swedish sensory copula verbs se ut "look" (e.g. "look happy") and låta "sound" and their translations. In the prototypical meaning, these verbs combine the reference to a sense modality with a modal or evidential component (roughly: SEEM). One of these components can be bleached to various degrees depending on the grammatical context. It turns out that French to a much greater extent than the other languages uses verbs that are unmarked for the sense modality. The place of the result within a general typological framework is briefly discussed. Perceptual verbs referring to an Experience such as see and hear follow a universal lexicalization hierarchy, whereas the structuring of Phenomenon-based verbs is typologically variable. Résumé : Cet article commence par passer brièvement en revue les études actuelles des verbes de perception afin de contextualiser son propos, qui s'attache essentiellement aux verbes de perception orientés vers l'objet perçu. Trois grands types de verbes sont distingués : les copules sensorielles, les verbes de perceptibilité et les verbes sensoriels. Des verbes de ce type se rencontrent pour chacun des cinq sens. La classification est mise à l'épreuve des données issues d'un corpus de traduction, qui met en regard des romans suédois et leurs traductions en anglais, allemand, français et finnois. L'étude se concentre sur la vision et l'audition, en particulier sur les copules sensorielles du suédois se ut et låta et leurs traductions. Dans leur sens prototypique, ces verbes combinent une référence à un type de perception sensorielle et une composante modale ou évidentielle (schématiquement : SEMBLER). L'une de ces deux1. I would like to thank three anonymous reviewers for fruitful critical comments and Rea Peltola and Flavie Feray for valuable comments on the analysis of Finnish and French. Remaining mistakes are my own responsibility.

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Verbs of letting in Germanic and Romance languages

Cited by 19 publications

References 25 publications

A large quantitative analysis of written language challenges the idea that all languages are equally complex

A large quantitative analysis of written language challenges the idea that all languages are equally complex

Why we need a token-based typology: A case study of analytic and lexical causatives in fifteen European languages

Phenomenon-Based Perception Verbs in Swedish from a Typological and Contrastive Perspective

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