Quantitative Linguistics Research Articles

Gender and Education: Their Role in the Zipfian Distribution of Speech Acts

ABSTRACT Speech acts, as basic communication units in pragmatics, are highly correlated to speakers’ communicative intentions. It is a worthwhile goal to explore whether they obey some linguistic laws that reflect people’s cognitive mechanisms, e.g. Zipf’s Law. However, few studies have examined whether the Zipf distribution can capture the frequencies of speech acts, and whether the parameters of it can show how speakers’ attributes (e.g. gender and education level) relate to the use of speech acts. As a preliminary attempt to bridge this gap, the current study finds from the data sample of the Switchboard Dialog Act Corpus that: (1) the Zipf distribution well captures the distribution of speech acts; (2) the parameter a can distinguish the dialogs between speakers of different genders, and it shows a regularity of the highest frequency of an SA in a dialigue to some degree; (3) the parameter b can differentiate speakers of different education levels – people with college-level education may have higher expressivity of SAs compared with those with higher-than-college-level education. This study shows that Zipf’s Law can be extended to the analysis of pragmatic phenomena, which may become part of the synergetic system of language through the approach of Quantitative Linguistics.

Cross-linguistic authorship attribution and gender profiling. Machine translation as a method for bridging the language gap

Abstract This study explores the feasibility of cross-linguistic authorship attribution and the author’s gender identification using Machine Translation (MT). Computational stylistics experiments were conducted on a Greek blog corpus translated into English using Google’s Neural MT. A Random Forest algorithm was employed for authorship and gender profiling, using different feature groups [Author’s Multilevel N-gram Profiles, quantitative linguistics (QL), and cross-lingual word embeddings (CLWE)] in both original and translated texts. Results indicate that MT is a viable method for converting a multilingual corpus into one language for authorship attribution and gender profiling research, with considerable accuracy when training and testing datasets use identical language. In the pure cross-linguistic scenario, higher accuracies than the baselines were obtained using CLWE and QL features.

Zipf’s Law for Speech Acts in Spoken English

Statement of Retraction We, the Editors and Publisher of the Journal of Quantitative Linguistics, have retracted the following article: Zipf’s Law for Speech Acts in Spoken English by Da Qi and Hua Wang (DOI: 10.1080/09296174.2023.2202470). Since publication, concerns have been raised about the fact there is significant overlap in the discussion section and references of this article with the following article, published in Springer’s Psychonomic Bulletin & Review: Zipf’s Law Revisited: Spoken Dialog, Linguistic Units, Parameters, and the Principle of Least Effort, by Guido M. Linders and Max M. Louwerse (DOI: 10.3758/s13423-022-02142-9). This overlap has been verified by the journal Editorial team and as this is a breach of our Editorial Policies, we are retracting the article from the journal. However, given the originality of the authors’ core research idea is not in doubt, we have given the authors the option to submit a revised version of their article. The authors have been informed of this and they have agreed to retract the article. We have been informed in our decision-making by our policy on publishing ethics and integrity and the COPE guidelines on retractions. The retracted article will remain online to maintain the scholarly record, but it will be digitally watermarked on each page as ‘Retracted’.

Modifying Language for a Higher Goal: Investigating Quantitative Features of Apple’s Launch Event Speech from 2016 to 2022

ABSTRACT In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Apple Inc. switched its product launch from onsite events to pre-recorded online broadcasts. Yet this form has been carried on even though the pandemic has faded. It is unclear if this shift was accompanied by a move in language complexity and how the communication effect was influenced. This study analysed Apple’s product launch events from 2016 to 2022 using quantitative linguistics metrics such as lexical complexity, word token length, entropy, readability, and sentence length distribution. The analysis adopted the reach-effect-durability framework for interpreting the effects of strategic communication. The results showed that Apple’s online product launch events featured richer and longer words, increased text difficulty, and a decrease in the proportion of short sentences. Such changes happened in a balanced manner that can be interpreted in view of the driving and restraining forces resulting from the mode shift of the launch event. This study demonstrates the feasibility of assessing efforts and strategies used in a communication campaign through quantitative text analysis.

Activity versus Descriptivity: A Stylometric Analysis of Two English Translations of Hongloumeng

This study examined the translation style of David Hawkes and the Yangs (Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang) in their English translations of Hongloumeng, a Chinese Great Classic, by considering the hybrid register nature of fiction. The activity index, a measure from quanti-tative linguistics that calculates the ratio of verb occurrences to the sum of verb and adjec-tive occurrences, was used to analyze the active-descriptive equilibrium patterns across the two Hongloumeng translations and the two sub-registers of fiction. Our analysis is based on a corpus that separates fictional narration and dialogues from the first 80 chapters of the two Hongloumeng translations. The study found that, overall, dialogues tend to be more active than narration and Hawkes’ translation was characterized by a greater level of activity com-pared to the Yangs’ version. Subsequent analysis revealed that Hawkes' translation dis-played a higher level of activity in fictional dialogues while demonstrating a more descrip-tive approach in fictional narration. The results suggest that Hawkes’ translation adheres more closely to the typical stylistic conventions of fiction writing in English. The stylistic differences between the two translations of Hongloumeng are believed to be a result of a combination of factors, including the translators’ language and cultural backgrounds and their choice of translation strategies and approaches, which may have contributed to the var-iations in the final translated products.

Phonetic differences between affirmative and feedback head nods in German Sign Language (DGS): A pose estimation study.

This study investigates head nods in natural dyadic German Sign Language (DGS) interaction, with the aim of finding whether head nods serving different functions vary in their phonetic characteristics. Earlier research on spoken and sign language interaction has revealed that head nods vary in the form of the movement. However, most claims about the phonetic properties of head nods have been based on manual annotation without reference to naturalistic text types and the head nods produced by the addressee have been largely ignored. There is a lack of detailed information about the phonetic properties of the addressee's head nods and their interaction with manual cues in DGS as well as in other sign languages, and the existence of a form-function relationship of head nods remains uncertain. We hypothesize that head nods functioning in the context of affirmation differ from those signaling feedback in their form and the co-occurrence with manual items. To test the hypothesis, we apply OpenPose, a computer vision toolkit, to extract head nod measurements from video recordings and examine head nods in terms of their duration, amplitude and velocity. We describe the basic phonetic properties of head nods in DGS and their interaction with manual items in naturalistic corpus data. Our results show that phonetic properties of affirmative nods differ from those of feedback nods. Feedback nods appear to be on average slower in production and smaller in amplitude than affirmation nods, and they are commonly produced without a co-occurring manual element. We attribute the variations in phonetic properties to the distinct roles these cues fulfill in turn-taking system. This research underlines the importance of non-manual cues in shaping the turn-taking system of sign languages, establishing the links between such research fields as sign language linguistics, conversational analysis, quantitative linguistics and computer vision.

Do gender differences exist in letters of recommendation for reproductive endocrinology and infertility fellowship?

Objective(s)To determine if gender differences exist in letters of recommendation for Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility fellowship. DesignCohort study SettingAcademic medical center SubjectsCohort of applicants to a reproductive endocrinology and infertility fellowship program at single Midwestern academic institution in a single year. Intervention(s)None Main Outcome MeasureQuantitative measures included linguistics inquiry and word count analysis, with four summary variables and twenty-five word categories, to quantify tone and themes present by gender. Performing qualitative analysis in parallel to linguistic analysis allowed for exploration of themes not conveyed in quantitative methods alone. Qualitative measures included frequency of code themes in letters of recommendation by applicant gender. Result(s)There were 272 letters from 72 applicants, 54 (76%) of which were women and 17 (24%) were men. One applicant was excluded because gender information was not specified; 269 letters were included in the quantitative linguistics and qualitative coding analysis. One hundred ten letters (41%) were written by women, and 159 (59%) by men. Letters of recommendation written for men had higher mean word count than those written for women (537 vs 474, p=0.04).Linguistics Inquiry and Word Count analysis exhibited more risk words used to describe men applicants (p=0.01). When comparing word categories by letter writer gender, women letter writers more frequently used communal, affect, and home word categories while men writers more frequently used affiliation-related words.Qualitative analysis revealed that letters for men applicants described leadership, altruism, rapport with patients, and strong endorsements more frequently, while women applicants’ letters more often mentioned doubt raisers and disclosures of personal life. Additionally, letters for women applicants more often described candidates as drama-free, not easy to “fluster,” and not complainers. Further, letters for women more frequently disclosed parenthood status. Conclusion(s)Gender differences exist among both letter writers and applicants. Qualitative analysis revealed that women applicants were more likely to be described with doubt raisers and personal life disclosures, while men were more likely to be described by their altruism and with a strong endorsement. Increasing bias awareness and implementing mitigation strategies would improve gender equity in letters of recommendation.

The structure of conditional sentence in the newspaper journalistic style of standard Turkishl

The article is devoted to the use of various means of expressing the functional-semantic field of condition by reference to the Turkish press of the 20th – 21st centuries, which is considered the most “democratic” and flexible style of standard language. The structure of complex sentence in modern Turkish has not been so far in the focus of researchers, which determines the topicality and scientific novelty of this paper. The aim of the study is to determine the basic tendencies in Turkish syntax in the diachronic aspect during the last century, using the methods of comparative and quantitative linguistics. The research results show that in the newspaper journalistic style of the modern Turkish language preference is being given to morphological (forms of conditional mood and, less frequently, conditional modality) and lexical-syntactic (constructions made with verbal forms and auxiliary words) means of expressing condition. It is noted that periphrastic forms of conditional mood and modality are not used in the 21st century. There is a decrease in number of lexical means originating from Arabic and Persian, which can be the result of the evolution of the Turkish mass media language; moreover, writers refuse to use conjunctions due to them being optional in a Turkish conditional sentence. In addition, in the Turkish press of the 21st century, means that express substantival instead of adjectival meaning and do not contain temporality are used with higher frequency. Previous studies carried out on the topic of sentences of concession, reason and comparison in the Turkish press show similar results.

The Maritime Domain-Specific Corpus: Compilation and Applications

This paper reports on the compilation of a multi-genre maritime domain-specific corpus and the research methods used to analyze it. The corpus was compiled using a combination of manual and automated methods, including web crawling and manual selection of relevant texts. Qualitative and quantitative methods, such as discourse analysis and statistical analysis, were employed to analyze the corpus. The paper describes the background, significance, text scope, principles, and process for compiling the corpus, and explores its applications, including maritime language curriculum development, standardization of maritime language genres, international maritime discourse analysis, term extraction, development of maritime domain-specific machine translation models, and the study of quantitative linguistics in the maritime domain. This study can provide a valuable resource for researchers and educators in the maritime domain and serve as a reference and inspiration for future studies in this field.

A corpus-based analysis of the effect of syntactic complexity on disfluency in consecutive interpreting

This study investigates the effect of input and output syntactic complexity on disfluency based on the corpus of press conference interpreting. In line with widespread practice in quantitative linguistics, mean dependency distance has been taken as the metric here for quantifying syntactic complexity. As the occurrence of disfluency is count data, this study uses the Poisson regression model to evaluate the effect of input and output syntactic complexity on disfluency occurrences, and on the variation of such occurrences with different types of reformulation methods. Our results show that occurrence of disfluency can be predicted by both the input and output syntactic complexity as quantified by the mean dependency distance, and that when the reformulation method of “divide” is used, the occurrence of disfluency does not increase significantly in the output even when the output sentence has a higher mean dependency distance. The findings reveal how input and output syntactic complexity predicts disfluency, and how reformulation methods interact with syntactic complexity to moderate cognitive load.

Unifying Models for Word Length Distributions Based on Types and Tokens

ABSTRACT Word length studies have been one of the central issues in Quantitative Linguistics for a long time. Most models were constructed for very specific purposes, i.e. the individual models apply only to a specific language, only to token counts or only to type counts. The present paper takes up the challenge of developing unifying models which account for both type and token frequencies of a moderately large sample of languages (eight Indo-European and two non-Indo-European languages). We introduce three models which can be well fitted to all our data: the exponentiated Hyper-Poisson distribution, the generalized gamma and the Sichel distribution. We also discuss the possibility of interpreting the model parameters linguistically.

A Quantitative Approach to the Study on Length-Frequency Relationship of English Patterns

As a master of lexicology and corpus-driven linguistic studies, pattern grammar shares the features of concern on collocation and approximation to natural language, which provides an optimization idea for the extensively used phrase structure grammar and dependency grammar in natural language processing. This research adopts the methods of quantitative linguistics, taking patterns as the research focus to explore the length-frequency relationship of patterns, verify Zipf law and synergic linguistic model in respect of patterns, and analyze the usage characteristics of patterns in different registers. The results have demonstrated that Zipf's law is also applicable to patterns, and the synergic linguistic model shows a preferable goodness of fit on the description of the pattern length-frequency relations. This study provides bidirectional contributions to pattern grammar and the synergic relationship between length and frequency. In addition, it offers a refinement method for the application of patterns in different registers.

Databases on the Indonesian Prefixes PE- and PEN-

This paper provides the theoretical grounding in constituting databases related to PE- and PEN-, two Indonesian nominalizing prefixes, which have various meanings (e.g., patient, agent, or instrument). The first database contains the words with PE- and PEN- whereas the second database provides the cosine similarity between two words of interest. Using a written Indonesian corpus as the primary source (Leipzig Corpora Collection), the databases contain the following information: PE- or PEN- prefixes, allomorph of PEN-, base word, semantics role, morphological variation, cosine similarity, as well as the word frequency. Furthermore, this paper elaborates the theoretical consideration on how each information was cultivated. In building the databases, Indonesian morphological parser and Word to Vector were used to analyze the Indonesian morphological status and to put the words in the corpus into a vector. In addition, manual verification for the data against the Indonesian comprehensive dictionary was also conducted. In the end, the databases are available for free so that the data could be used as materials for a corpus-based analysis on Indonesian morphology. This research shed light to a careful and thorough classification of the open-access databases of PE- and PEN- from their allomorphs, base word, semantics role, and morphological variation. The information provided in this article is hoped to be contributive in Indonesian morphology specifically, and other linguistics fields (e.g., corpus linguistics and quantitative linguistics) in general.

Conservation narratives and bibliogrammatic networks in the conservation landscape

SummaryThe analysis of conservation narratives primarily resides in the methods and techniques of social sciences, focusing mainly on uncovering advocacy versus critical lines of thought in the complex mosaic of arguments around institutional actors and the public. Researchers have previously proposed an archetypal scheme in which the core conservation narratives and their conceptual interrelations are classified. This report explores the feasibility of coupling such a traditional method with techniques emanating from quantitative linguistics, network analysis and bibliometry. The neologic metaphor of the Anthropause is purposely added to long-established narratives to examine its potential effects on the conservation narratives landscape. The results show that this metaphor reorganizes the mentally constructed connections between flag narratives and symbolic lexical units.

The journal SMIL – Statistical Methods in Linguistics (1962–1976) – some notes about the history of quantitative linguistics in Scandinavia and beyond

This article deals with the history of quantitative linguistics. The focus of this paper is the journal SMIL – Statistical Methods in Linguistics, which was published by Hans Karlgren in Stockholm from 1962 to 1976 (with a short interruption between 1966 and 1969). SMIL is a representative example of the process of differentiation in quantitative linguistics during the seventies and can be seen as one early major “Scandinavian” contribution to statistical and quantitative linguistics.

In the face of a threat: A study of political discourse based on the speeches of American presidents

Analysis of the structural elements of the media space and communication mechanisms that shape the information picture of the world and construct the image of socially significant facts remains relevant in the eventful context of modern life; each time it requires fresh empirical material for research. The article analyzes State of the Union addresses of US Presidents in 2003 and 2022 — by George W. Bush and J. Biden — to identify the crypto components, or hidden aspects of leadership that are manifested in both speeches. The choice of sources is related to the current situation in the world, in which one can see some similarities with the context of the presidential speech twenty years ago. The study of texts included two stages: quantitative content analysis and qualitative discourse analysis. To highlight the semantic priorities of the texts, the methods of quantitative linguistics were used; calculating the frequency of linguistic units made it possible to determine the key words of the discourse and its main conceptual vectors. The qualitative analysis of the semantic and pragmatic aspects of information showed that both speeches were characterized by the use of such strategies as generalization, example, amplification, concession, repetition, and contrast. The study revealed that many common features in the speeches were due to the specifics of the genre — both in the lexical content and in the choice of strategies for influencing the audience. Both speeches contain a large number of units referring to the socio-political realities of the era; in their structure, the role of personal pronouns is extremely high, which helps create images of politicians with outstanding leadership qualities that are necessary to unite their people. The analysis also made it possible to highlight a number of peculiarities, both in the agenda and in the choice of means of expression.

Translative Linguistics: an Aspectualized Review of Initial Provisions. Part 1. Gnoseology of Translation

The article introduces translative linguistics as a special branch in the study of natural languages and describes the history of its development. Translative linguistics uses the methods of quantitative linguistics, combinatorial linguistics, associative grammar, lexicography, etc. It focuses on the same aspects of language as historical grammar, phonetics, political linguistics, etc. The ontology of translational linguistics sees the natural language and its units as its research object. Translation (reserve translation, machine translation, and reverse machine translation) acts as a research method that translational linguistics uses to describe the patterns of the translated language. The author reviews various scientific publications to describe the concepts and terms of translational linguistics. The author uses the method of linguistic logic, which is understood as incorporating a new concept in the traditional system of theoretical linguistic concepts.

“Michael Cavendish’s” 14 Airs in Tablature to the Lute (1598)

Abstract This article is part of A Comparative Study of Byrd Songs: Volume 17 of the British Renaissance Re-Attribution and Modernization (BRRAM) series. Volume 17 offers evidence to re-assign the authorship of the 29 texts in William Byrd’s linguistic group. Volumes 1-2 of the series present a new computational-linguistic attribution method that reassigns all of the tested 303 texts from the British Renaissance to a Workshop of only six ghostwriters: Byrd, William Percy, Josuah Sylvester, Gabriel Harvey, Richard Verstegan and Gabriel Harvey. This article is a fragment from Volume 17 that presents new evidence, beyond the quantitative linguistics, for one of the Byrd re-assignments, “Michael Cavendish’s” Airs (1598), together with a modernizing translation of a representative sample of poetry from the linguistically-tested text. Airs is a rarely commented on work that tends to appear in studies of the self-plagiarisms within it, or between it and other texts. Only a single private copy of Airs has survived; this closeting is likely to have been the result of its dedication addressing Lady Arbella, who repeatedly unsuccessfully plotted with the Cavendishes and Percys to gain the British throne, first after Elizabeth I’s reign, and then after James I’s. The dedication appears to have been a propagandistic marker of support during Arbella’s attempt in 1609 to marry Seymour to challenge James I’s claim, which ended with Arbella’s imprisonment and premature death. The Airs book is likely to have been published to encourage this effort and was probably closeted and had its title-page backdated to 1598 when the attempt failed. Additionally, a comparative study is included in the Appendix between a poem in Airs and a translation of a song it echoes from Giovanni Croce.

Stochastic Time‐Series Analyses Highlight the Day‐To‐Day Dynamics of Lexical Frequencies

Standard models in quantitative linguistics assume that word usage follows a fixed frequency distribution, often Zipf's law or a close relative. This view, however, does not capture the near daily variations in topics of conversation, nor the short-term dynamics of language change. In order to understand the dynamics of human language use, we present a corpus of daily word frequency variation scraped from online news sources every 20 min for more than 2 years. We construct a simple time-varying model with a latent state, which is observed via word frequency counts. We use Bayesian techniques to infer the parameters of this model for 20,000 words, allowing us to convert complex word-frequency trajectories into low-dimensional parameters in word usage. By analyzing the inferred parameters of this model, we quantify the relative mobility and drift of words on a day-to-day basis, while accounting for sampling error. We quantify this variation and show evidence against "rich-get-richer" models of word use, which have been previously hypothesized to explain statistical patterns in language.

Are Daojing and Dejing stylistically independent of each other: A stylometric analysis with activity and descriptivity

Abstract It has been qualitatively evidenced that Daojing and Dejing, the two sections of DaoDejing, are independent of each other in content, style, and authorship. However, this claim remains controversial because there has been scant quantitative study of them that probes into their syntactic structure to quantitatively evidence the independence due to methodological challenges to quantitative approaches. To address this problem, the present study employed two indexes of quantitative linguistics, activity and descriptivity, to capture the syntactic features of the inner structure of Daojing and Dejing to validate the independence as of the above. Results of this study reveal that (1) the chi-square test shows that both sections are significantly active texts; (2) the u-test and nonparametric two-related-sample test show that the two texts do not differ from each other significantly either holistically or by the 300-character segments in terms of activity and descriptivity; and (3) the activity sequences (Q-sequence) in the two sections can be both better fitted by two different functions, viz. the beta-function and the Morse function. Moreover, with the development of the text, a synergic relationship is found in the distribution of verbs and adjectives, indicative of a dynamic and complex self-regulating process of the text development. To conclude, contrary to the claim of prior studies that they were written by different authors, our stylometric study has quantitatively demonstrated that Daojing and Dejing are not independent of each other stylistically, especially in terms of activity and descriptivity.