Positional Aspects of Dependency Distance
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Hua Wang
Abstract
Based on Chinese dependency treebank PMT 1.0, the present study investigates the positional aspects of dependency distance (DD) quantitatively. Results show that (1) as the word position in the sentence increases, the tendency of mean dependency distance (MDD) in different sentence length groups shows striking similarity. The two longest MDDs generally are in the sentence-initial and sentence-final positions; (2) The consensus string (CS) and weighted consensus string (WCS) show some characteristics, which demonstrates again that human cognition plays an important role in affecting DD and dependency distance minimization is a universal tendency; (3) The distribution of DD in each sentential position can be captured by power law, which implies that something like a vertical structure of texts exists.
Abstract
Based on Chinese dependency treebank PMT 1.0, the present study investigates the positional aspects of dependency distance (DD) quantitatively. Results show that (1) as the word position in the sentence increases, the tendency of mean dependency distance (MDD) in different sentence length groups shows striking similarity. The two longest MDDs generally are in the sentence-initial and sentence-final positions; (2) The consensus string (CS) and weighted consensus string (WCS) show some characteristics, which demonstrates again that human cognition plays an important role in affecting DD and dependency distance minimization is a universal tendency; (3) The distribution of DD in each sentential position can be captured by power law, which implies that something like a vertical structure of texts exists.
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- 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
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- 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
