Word length in Chinese : The Menzerath-Altmann law is valid after all.

Autoři

MOTALOVÁ Tereza MAČUTEK Ján ČECH Radek

Rok publikování 2023
Druh Článek v odborném periodiku
Časopis / Zdroj JOURNAL OF QUANTITATIVE LINGUISTICS
Fakulta / Pracoviště MU

Filozofická fakulta

Citace
www https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09296174.2023.2259937
Doi http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09296174.2023.2259937
Klíčová slova word length; Menzerath-Altmann law; Chinese; syllable; Chinese characters
Popis According to the Menzerath-Altmann law, longer language constructs consist, on average, of shorter constituents. It is most often studied at the level of words and syllables (the mean syllable length gets shorter with the increasing word length). Its validity at this level was corroborated in several languages. However, it was claimed that Chinese is an exception with respect to the validity of the Menzerath-Altmann law. We show that the law is valid if word types are considered, while the behaviour of word tokens is different. This difference can be explained by the fact that the Zipf law of abbreviation is valid not only for words but also for syllables (shorter syllables are used more frequently).

Používáte starou verzi internetového prohlížeče. Doporučujeme aktualizovat Váš prohlížeč na nejnovější verzi.