dc.contributor.author | González Torre, Ivan |
dc.contributor.author | Debowski, Lukasz |
dc.contributor.author | Hernández Fernández, Antonio |
dc.contributor.other | Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. Institut de Ciències de l'Educació |
dc.date.accessioned | 2021-10-07T07:27:34Z |
dc.date.available | 2021-10-07T07:27:34Z |
dc.date.issued | 2021-08-20 |
dc.identifier.citation | González, I.; Debowski, L.; Hernández-Fernández, A. Can Menzerath's law be a criterion of complexity in communication? "PloS one", 20 Agost 2021, vol. 16, núm. 8, article e0256133, p. 1-21. |
dc.identifier.issn | 1932-6203 |
dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/2117/353245 |
dc.description.abstract | Menzerath’s law is a quantitative linguistic law which states that, on average, the longer is a linguistic construct, the shorter are its constituents. In contrast, Menzerath-Altmann’s law (MAL) is a precise mathematical power-law-exponential formula which expresses the expected length of the linguistic construct conditioned on the number of its constituents. In this paper, we investigate the anatomy of MAL for constructs being word tokens and constituents being syllables, measuring its length in graphemes. First, we derive the exact form of MAL for texts generated by the memoryless source with three emitted symbols, which can be interpreted as a "monkey typing" model or a null model. We show that this null model complies with Menzerath’s law, revealing that Menzerath’s law itself can hardly be a criterion of complexity in communication. This observation does not apply to the more precise Menzerath-Altmann’s law, which predicts an inverted regime for sufficiently range constructs, i.e., the longer is a word, the longer are its syllables. To support this claim, we analyze MAL on data from 21 languages, consisting of texts from the Standardized Project Gutenberg. We show the presence of the inverted regime, not exhibited by the null model, and we demonstrate robustness of our results. We also report the complicated distribution of syllable sizes with respect to their position in the word, which might be related with the emerging MAL. Altogether, our results indicate that Menzerath’s law—in terms of correlations—is a spurious observation, while complex patterns and efficiency dynamics should be rather attributed to specific forms of Menzerath-Altmann’s law. |
dc.description.sponsorship | This work has been funded by the project PRO2021-S03-HERNANDEZ (Institut d’Estudis Catalans), where AHF is the principal investigator. URL: https://futur.upc.edu/30546321 AHF is also funded by the grant TIN2017-89244-R from Ministerio de Economia, Industria y Competitividad (Gobierno de España) and supported by the recognition 2017SGR-856 (MACDA) from AGAUR (Generalitat de Catalunya). URL: https://futur.upc. edu/2202438 |
dc.format.extent | 21 p. |
dc.language.iso | eng |
dc.publisher | Public Library of Science (PLOS) |
dc.rights | Attribution 4.0 International |
dc.rights.uri | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
dc.subject | Àrees temàtiques de la UPC::Informàtica::Intel·ligència artificial::Llenguatge natural |
dc.subject.lcsh | Computational linguistics |
dc.subject.other | Menzerath's law |
dc.subject.other | Menzerath-Altmann's law |
dc.subject.other | Monkey typing |
dc.subject.other | Linguistic laws |
dc.subject.other | Memoryless source |
dc.subject.other | Communication |
dc.subject.other | Standardized Project Gutenberg Corpus |
dc.subject.other | Hidden Markov Model |
dc.title | Can Menzerath’s law be a criterion of complexity in communication? |
dc.type | Article |
dc.subject.lemac | Lingüística computacional |
dc.contributor.group | Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. LARCA - Laboratori d'Algorísmia Relacional, Complexitat i Aprenentatge |
dc.identifier.doi | 10.1371/journal.pone.0256133 |
dc.description.peerreviewed | Peer Reviewed |
dc.relation.publisherversion | https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0256133 |
dc.rights.access | Open Access |
local.identifier.drac | 31981580 |
dc.description.version | Postprint (published version) |
dc.relation.projectid | info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/IEC/PRO2021-S03-HERNANDEZ |
dc.relation.projectid | info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/AEI/Plan Estatal de Investigación Científica y Técnica y de Innovación 2013-2016/TIN2017-89244-R/ES/GESTION Y ANALISIS DE DATOS COMPLEJOS/ |
dc.relation.projectid | info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/AGAUR/2017 SGR 856 |
local.citation.author | González, I.; Debowski, L.; Hernández-Fernández, A. |
local.citation.publicationName | PloS one |
local.citation.volume | 16 |
local.citation.number | 8, article e0256133 |
local.citation.startingPage | 1 |
local.citation.endingPage | 21 |
dc.description.sdg | Objectius de Desenvolupament Sostenible::9 - Indústria, Innovació i Infraestructura |