Empirical Analyses of Valency Structures
-
Andrei Beliankou
Abstract
Verb valency structures have long been the focus in dependency grammar. Arguments, whether they are obligatory complements or optional adjuncts of verb valency, generally are not described with respect to conditions and criteria in linguistic dictionaries. Therefore, this article attempts to examine the individual dynamic occurrence of verbs with their specific argument structures, and the differentiation between complements and adjuncts from a quantitative perspective. Data were obtained from a dependency syntactically annotated Russian National Corpus (RNC), which contained 2255 different Sentence Structure Schemes (SSS). Several conclusions are obtained. First, the rank-size distribution of SSS fit the Waring distribution perfectly. Second, the relation between the number of SSS (y) and the number of verbs (x) with y SSS follows an exponential function. Third, the number of complements for SSS and the frequency of the SSS with x complements abide by the Binomial distribution. The empirical data concerning valency structures display a lawful behaviour, which has relative implications for language teaching and learning.
Abstract
Verb valency structures have long been the focus in dependency grammar. Arguments, whether they are obligatory complements or optional adjuncts of verb valency, generally are not described with respect to conditions and criteria in linguistic dictionaries. Therefore, this article attempts to examine the individual dynamic occurrence of verbs with their specific argument structures, and the differentiation between complements and adjuncts from a quantitative perspective. Data were obtained from a dependency syntactically annotated Russian National Corpus (RNC), which contained 2255 different Sentence Structure Schemes (SSS). Several conclusions are obtained. First, the rank-size distribution of SSS fit the Waring distribution perfectly. Second, the relation between the number of SSS (y) and the number of verbs (x) with y SSS follows an exponential function. Third, the number of complements for SSS and the frequency of the SSS with x complements abide by the Binomial distribution. The empirical data concerning valency structures display a lawful behaviour, which has relative implications for language teaching and learning.
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Preface V
- Contents XI
- Dependency, Corpora and Cognition 1
- Interrelations among Dependency Tree Widths, Heights and Sentence Lengths 31
- Quantitative Analysis of Syntactic Dependency in Czech 53
- Dissortativity in a Bipartite Network of Dependency Relations and Communicative Functions 71
- Empirical Analyses of Valency Structures 93
- Regular Dynamic Patterns of Verbal Valency Ellipsis in Modern Spoken Chinese 101
- Negentropy of Dependency Types and Parts of Speech in the Clause 119
- Dynamic Valency and Dependency Distance 145
- Minimization and Probability Distribution of Dependency Distance in the Process of Second Language Acquisition 167
- Influences of Dependency Distance on the Syntactic Development of Deaf and Hard-ofhearing Students 191
- Positional Aspects of Dependency Distance 213
- Dependency Distance and Direction of English Relative Clauses 239
- Differences between English Subject Postmodifiers and Object Post-modifiers: From the Perspective of Dependency Distance 261
- How Do Universal Dependencies Distinguish Language Groups? 277
- A Quantitative Analysis on a Literary Genre Essay’s Syntactic Features 295
- A Multidimensional Model of Syntactic Dependency Trees for Authorship Attribution 315
- Subject Index 349
- Author Index 357
- List of Contributors 365
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Preface V
- Contents XI
- Dependency, Corpora and Cognition 1
- Interrelations among Dependency Tree Widths, Heights and Sentence Lengths 31
- Quantitative Analysis of Syntactic Dependency in Czech 53
- Dissortativity in a Bipartite Network of Dependency Relations and Communicative Functions 71
- Empirical Analyses of Valency Structures 93
- Regular Dynamic Patterns of Verbal Valency Ellipsis in Modern Spoken Chinese 101
- Negentropy of Dependency Types and Parts of Speech in the Clause 119
- Dynamic Valency and Dependency Distance 145
- Minimization and Probability Distribution of Dependency Distance in the Process of Second Language Acquisition 167
- Influences of Dependency Distance on the Syntactic Development of Deaf and Hard-ofhearing Students 191
- Positional Aspects of Dependency Distance 213
- Dependency Distance and Direction of English Relative Clauses 239
- Differences between English Subject Postmodifiers and Object Post-modifiers: From the Perspective of Dependency Distance 261
- How Do Universal Dependencies Distinguish Language Groups? 277
- A Quantitative Analysis on a Literary Genre Essay’s Syntactic Features 295
- A Multidimensional Model of Syntactic Dependency Trees for Authorship Attribution 315
- Subject Index 349
- Author Index 357
- List of Contributors 365
