Quantitative Linguistics Research Articles

Lexical Features of Economic Legal Policy and News in China Since the COVID-19 Outbreak

Lexical features are influenced by different languages and genres. The study of lexical features in different genres of texts on the same topic is helpful to understand the universalities and peculiarities of languages. This study constructs a research on the lexical feature and word collocations of two self-build corpora (China's economic Legal Policy Corpus and English News Corpus during the COVID-19 pandemic), the methods of Quantitative Linguistics and context interpretation are adopted. It was found that: (1) the word length, word frequency, word cluster and high frequency word distribution in English economic news and Chinese economic legal policies are influenced by language and genre to some extent, and they conform to different functional image distribution; (2) during the COVID-19 pandemic, “development” has been the focus of China's economic legal policies and English news, the two have attached importance to economic recovery and taken a positive attitude toward it in different ways. These findings suggest that: (1) There are some universalities and peculiarities between English economic news and Chinese economic legal policies in the distribution of lexical feature; (2) there is a certain synchronization between laws and news, and both of them maintain a positive and objective attitude toward the economic development during the pandemic. This study carries out a macroscopic investigation on internal structure and external interpretation, which enriches the study on lexical features and cultural features of language and provides some references for relevant studies.

Russian dictionary with concreteness/abstractness indices

The demand for a Russian dictionary with indices of abstractness/concreteness of words has been expressed in a number of areas including linguistics, psychology, neurophysiology and cognitive studies focused on imaging concepts in human cognitive systems. Although dictionaries of abstractness/concreteness were compiled for a number of languages, Russian has been recently viewed as an under-resourced language for the lack of one. The Laboratory of Quantitative Linguistics of Kazan Federal University has implemented two methods of compiling dictionaries of abstract/concrete words, i.e. respondents survey and extrapolation of human estimates with the help of an original computer program. In this article, we provide a detailed description of the methodology used for assessing abstractness/concreteness of words by native Russian respondents, as well as control algorithms validating the survey quality. The implementation of the methodology has enabled us to create a Russian dictionary (1500 words) with indices of concreteness/abstractness of words, including those missing in the Russian Semantic Dictionary by N.Yu. Shvedova (1998). We have also created three versions of a machine dictionary of abstractness/concreteness based on the extrapolation of the respondents' ratings. The third, most accurate version contains 22,000 words and has been compiled with the use of a modern deep learning technology of neural networks. The paper provides statistical characteristics (histograms of the distribution of ratings, dispersion, etc.) of both the machine dictionary and the dictionary obtained by interviewing informants. The quality of the machine dictionary was validated on a test set of words by means of contrasting machine and human evaluations with the latter viewed as more credible. The purpose of the paper is to give a detailed description of the methodology employed to create a concrete/abstract dictionary, as well as to demonstrate the methodology of its application in theoretical and applied research on concrete examples. The paper shows the practical use of this vocabulary in six case studies: predicting the complexity of school textbooks as a function of the share of abstract words; comparing abstractness indices of Russian-English equivalents; assessing concreteness/abstractness of polysemantic words; contrasting ratings of different age groups of respondents; contrasting ratings of respondents with different levels of education; analyzing concepts of "concreteness” and “specificity”.

The Role of Philosophy of Science in Quantitative Linguistics

Abstract The paper aims to evaluate the role of the philosophy of science in contemporary quanti-tative linguistics. The primary goal is the reflection of the scientific methods and models of scientific explanations (Köhler 1986, 2012) used in quantitative linguistics. The paper shows that the current philosophy of science has adopted some new approaches to ex-planation that are conducive to quantitative linguistics (Craver, Darden 2013, Eck, Mennes 2016). Above all, the philosophy of science offers new models of non-causal explanations (Reutlinger, Saatsi 2018; Lange 2017). The paper’s primary goal is to propose a new topo-logical model of explanation in system-theoretical linguistics, following Kostić’s (2019a) and Huneman’s (2018) approaches. This model of explanation overcomes various difficul-ties of functional explanation, such as the nature of the structural axiom and the func-tional equivalents. Simultaneously, it establishes a non-causal form of linguistic explana-tion which builds on the previous analysis of quantitative linguists (Andres 2009; Ferrer-i-Cancho, Solé 2003; Hřebíček 2002).

Parallels of human language in the behavior of bottlenose dolphins

Abstract Dolphins exhibit striking similarities with humans. Here we review them with the help of quantitative linguistics and information theory. Various statistical laws of language that are well-known in quantitative linguistics, i.e. Zipf’s law for word frequencies, the law of meaning distribution, the law of abbreviation and Menzerath’s, law have been found in dolphin vocal or gestural behavior. The information theory of these laws suggests that humans and dolphins share cost-cutting principles of organization.

Quantitative Analysis of the Word Spread Dynamics as a Factor in Identifying of the Youth Mass Media Significance

This study examines the role and place of youth media in changing the vocabulary of the Russian language. For a comparative analysis, three words were used, the factors of popularity of which are political propaganda, the frequent use of the word in a certain youth magazine and the widespread prevalence of the word on the Internet. A wave-like dynamics of an increase in the frequency of the word, which has become popular thanks to publications in the youth media, has been revealed: matured readers of the magazine, after 20-25 years, begin to actively use the word introduced into their vocabulary by the authors of the publications. The question is raised about the significance of the mass media for the dynamics of changes in the vocabulary of the language. A method has been developed to prove the influence of the mass media on the dynamics of changes in the vocabulary using the tools of quantitative linguistics. The history of the frequency of use of the analyzed words in the Russian language allows us to speak about the importance of youth mass media as determining the worldview and linguistic picture of the world of the text. Moreover, for other words in which the frequency correlates with the historical setting, the contexts of use themselves indicate the connection of the increased frequency with the personality of a particular publicist or writer and with the texts he generates.

Communicative types "Romeo" and "Othello" in Russian and English linguistic consciousness

The study is devoted to the consideration of the communicative types of "Romeo" and "Othello" in the Russian and English linguistic consciousness. The comparison involves the data of quantitative linguistics obtained using the method of continuous sampling from the corpus of the corresponding languages. The research is carried out within the framework of the cognitive-discursive paradigm of modern linguistics and is based on the basic categories and terminological tools of the corresponding section of linguistics. The comparison made it possible to establish significant differences in the perception of the communicative types of "Romeo" and "Othello" and a significant difference in word usage. In the case of both types and in both types of discourse, a complex character is reduced to a single characteristic feature. However, these traits are different in different traditions.

COVID‑19 and a Greek Catholic Hierarch’s Experience of Virtual Communication with Parishioners

In this article, the author carries out a communicative and pragmatic analysis of texts and a stylistic analysis of the keywords of religious discourse. The object of the research is the discourse of the Greek Catholic Church in Slovakia. The subject of the research is the keywords and main topics in the corpus of Archbishop Milan Chautur’s publications on social networks. The research methodology is based on the principles of discourse analysis, computational linguistics, linguistics 2.0, and quantitative linguistics. To realise the purpose of the research, the author uses the linguistic tool Sketch Engine, a fourth-generation concordancer, which provides quick search and statistical processing of data. For the corpus, the author refers to material from Chautur’s Internet messages in the profile named “Vladyka Milan odpovedá” (Vladyka Chautur responds) over one year of the pandemic, i. e., between 2020 and 2021. Using the Simple Maths method, the author extracts keywords based on two corpora – the main one (created by the user) and the background one (built into the system). Vladyka’s web-communication fits the modern trend of active communication through social networks, where it is not only used by representatives of the secular world, but also by the clergy. Considering the fact that the background corpus of Slovak Web 2011 (skTenTen11) is a language model, the author singles out the following keywords: isus (Jesus), Christ (Christ), pandémia (pandemic), kovid (Covid), bohorodička (Virgin Mary), cerkov (Church), vakcinácium (vaccinacium), and eparchia (diocese). These words have the highest coefficient of semantic similarity (Score) of words from the studied and background corpora. Using the linguistic criterion for isolating keywords, it is possible to single out the cognitive components of the archbishop’s discursive field, such as discursive dominants: human life, the Church on earth and in heaven, family.

Menzerath-Altmann Law in Consecutive and Simultaneous Interpreting: Insights into Varied Cognitive Processes and Load

ABSTRACT Notwithstanding theoretical simulations of distinctive cognitive processes and load of consecutive (CI) and simultaneous interpreting (SI), quantitative linguistic inquiry into their outputs is needed for solid empirical evidence. As a fundamental law of quantitative linguistics, Menzerath–Altmann Law (MAL) mirrors the economic processing of linguistic information and complex dynamic language system. Given its extensive validation at various linguistic levels and predictive power of its parameters in register, language and authorship differentiation, MAL is worthy of being applied to interpreting studies. We endeavour to investigate whether interpreted languages follow the MAL and reveal varied cognitive load of CI versus SI, as manifested by different MAL fitting models. Results show that (1) both CI and SI outputs follow the MAL; (2) SI processing involves more diversified structural information and shows a greater tendency of shortening the clauses of a sentence with increased sentence length, than CI processing, expressed by significantly higher a and lower b in SI models than that in CI models. Our findings suggest the disparate language representations are shaped by cognitive capacity limitations and interpreting modalities, and reveal how language system dynamically re-regulates and reorganizes the linguistic information to accommodate environmental settings from the perspective of synergetic linguistics.

Category of speech system in modeling affective processes (based on the material of network communication)

The goal of this paper is to convey the meaning of the category of speech system for computer cognitive modeling. By implementing it, the authors prove the importance of supplementing relational-situational analysis, based linguistically on the concept of functional syntax, with the technology of creating templates which are the formalization of those sections of stylisticspeech system that mark the mental processes under study. A review of works on speech system since the 1920s is given. It is shown that in recent decades, when studying speech system, the primary interest of linguists lies in the processes of verbal communication and in its main unit — a text. It is noted that the quantitative aspects of the language functioning in various areas and communicative situations are being examined not only in quantitative linguistics but also in the works on artificial intelligence. We prove the hypothesis that the given approach to the automatic analysis of texts is realized in all cases of social communicative practice, when to express the certain affective states or cognitive actions, we can find relatively stable ways of choosing and using linguistic means. From psychological point of view, this is the area of compressed internal actions, which, if necessary, can be expanded and expressed in the form of a verbal reaction or a verbal report. It is a broad research field covering the typologies underlying the known psychological inventories or recorded in descriptions of human behavior in various spheres of activity. The paper demonstrates the resources to analyze stylistic-speech system for the automatic search of professional crisis signs in social networks. The extensive material presented by the fragments of 86 network discussions describes the patterns of choice and use of multi-level language units to express the typical emotional states of currently experienced professional crisis. The linguistic markers of the mentioned states are considered in detail.

Improvised music follows human language quantitative properties to optimize music processing

Music is a cognitively demanding task. New tones override the previous tones in quick succession, with only a short window to process them. Language presents similar constraints on the brain. The cognitive constraints associated with language processing have been argued to promote the Chunk-and-Pass processing hypothesis and may influence the statistical regularities associated with word and phenome presentation that have been identified in language and are thought to allow optimal communication. If this hypothesis were true, then similar statistical properties should be identified in music as in language. By searching for real-life musical corpora, rather than relying on the artificial generation of musical stimuli, a novel approach to melodic fragmentation was developed specifically for a corpus comprised of improvisation transcriptions that represent a popular performance practice tradition from the 16th century. These improvisations were created by following a very detailed technique, which was disseminated through music tutorials and treatises across Europe during the 16th century. These music tutorials present a very precise methodology for improvisation, using a pre-defined vocabulary of melodic fragments (similar to modern jazz licks). I have found that these corpora follow two paramount, quantitative linguistics characteristics: (1) Zipf’s rank-frequency law and (2) Zipf’s abbreviation law. According to the working hypothesis, adherence to these laws ensures the optimal coding of the examined music corpora, which facilitates the improved cognitive processing for both the listener and the improviser. Although these statistical characteristics are not consciously implemented by the improviser, they might play a critical role in music processing for both the listener and the improviser.

Disordered beta thinned ensemble with applications.

It recently has been found that methods of the statistical theories of spectra can be a useful tool in the analysis of spectra far from levels of Hamiltonian systems. The purpose of the present study is to deepen this kind of approach by performing a more comprehensive spectral analysis that measures both the local- and long-range statistics. We have found that, as a common feature, spectra of this kind can exhibit a situation in which local statistics are relatively quenched while the long-range ones show large fluctuations. By combining three extensions of the standard random matrix theory (RMT) and considering long spectra, we demonstrate that this phenomenon occurs when disorder and level incompleteness are introduced in an RMT spectrum. Consequently, the long-range statistics follow Taylor's law, suggesting the presence of a fluctuation scaling (FS) mechanism in this kind of spectra. Applications of the combined ensemble are then presented for spectra originate from several very diverse areas, including complex networks, COVID-19 time series, and quantitative linguistics, which demonstrate that short- and long-range statistics reflect the rigid and elastic characteristics of a given spectrum, respectively. These observations may shed some light on spectral data classification.

Diachronic delta: A computational method for analysing periods of accelerated change in literary datasets

Abstract In his recently published book Distant Horizons (2019), Ted Underwood argues that literary change takes place incrementally. By analysing a dataset of English language fiction obtained from the digital research library HathiTrust, Underwood demonstrates that from the early 18th to the 21st century, literature written in English evinces a steady increase in words associated with physical description, concrete nouns as well as sensory perception and that this increase is accompanied by a proportional decrease in words associated with politics, economics as well as religion (Underwood 25). This article represents an effort to test Underwood’s incremental hypothesis by operationalizing Peter W.H. Smith and W. Aldridge’s cosine distance-based emendation to John Burrows’ ‘Delta’ method (Smith, P. W. H. and Aldridge, W. (2011). Improving authorship attribution: optimising burrows’ delta method. Journal of Quantitative Linguistics 18(1): 63–88). By applying cosine Delta across time rather than as it is conventionally applied, across text (Evert, Stefan et al. Understanding and Explaining Delta Measures for Authorship Attribution. Digital Scholarship in the Humanities 32 (suppl_2) (2017): ii4–ii16), we can identify particular years as being associated with extensive amounts of ‘novelty’ (which years introduce the most amount of distance from their predecessors) and also possess extensive amounts of ‘resonance’ (are relatively proximate to their successors). According to Alexander T.J. Barron et al.’s method for analysing the parliamentary debates of the French revolution, agents within a dataset which have high amounts of novelty and high amounts of resonance are both innovative and influential, as they are significantly different from the years which come before and relatively similar to the years which come after. We might refer to these years as ‘breaks’ and contrast their behaviour with the longue-durée approach otherwise prevalent within the computational literary studies discourse. Though, as this article demonstrates, Underwood’s hypothesis of incremental change remains robust when considering the changes which come over the novel from the mid-18th to the early 20th century, applying this method to poetic and dramatic production over the same period of time, thereby examining the distinct ways in which novelty and resonance behave, allow us to modulate Underwood’s hypothesis and to understand literary history within a more conjunctural framework.

The Distribution Patterns of Valency-changing Verbs: An Approach of Quantitative Linguistics

The present study attempts to explore the distribution patterns of the valency-changing verbs from the perspective of quantitative linguistics. We took authentic spoken language data as the research materials. The corpus used in this paper is a self-built spoken English corpus containing about 21,000 words. We half-manually annotated the corpus with the help of SpaCy, a natural language processing tool. According to the annotation results and statistical data, we obtained a total of 217 valency-changing English verbs and 248 sentence components governed by them. After analysis, the current study came to the following conclusions: First, bivalent verbs are most frequent among the three types of valency-changing verbs; second, after fitting all the language data to different probability distributions, we found that the rank-frequency distributions of all the valency-changing English verbs with different numbers of obligatory arguments obey the power law, and the frequencies of bivalent valency-changing verbs obey other kinds of distributions such as the mixed Poisson distribution.

Explain the law: When the evidence is not enough

Abstract The article responds to the current variability of research into linguistic laws and the explanation of these laws. We show basic features to approach linguistic laws in the field of quantitative linguistics and research on linguistic laws outside the field of language and text. Language laws are usually explained in terms of the language system—especially as economizing—or of the information structure of the text (Piantadosi 2014). One of the hallmarks of the transmission of linguistic laws outside the realm of language and text is that they provide other kinds of explanations (Torre et al. 2019). We want to show that the problem of linguistics in the explanation of linguistic laws lies primarily in its inability to clarify the internal structure of language material, and the influence of the theory or method used for sample processing on the result of law analysis—which was formulated by Peter Grzybek (2006). We would like to show that this is the reason why linguistics avoids explanations of linguistic laws.

Possible worlds of a literary text character: a cognitive and quantitative linguistic approach

The article aims to forward a model for analyzing the evaluative component of controversial literary characters. This model presupposes the application of the basic tenets of the possible worlds theory to the analysis of a fiction text, combining it with the methodology of cognitive and quantitative linguistics. To exemplify the employment of the developed model, the image of Louis XI, the King of France, depicted by W. Scott in his novel Quentin Durward, was analyzed. Portrayed as an astute politician, this protagonist puts on different guises and plays numerous roles while the plot unravels, trying to achieve his goals and influence the people around him. Such roles are viewed in the article as possible worlds of Louis XI. In these worlds, he is described through various positive and negative characteristics, which are considered predicates of basic propositional schemas featuring in semantics of lingual networks. To fathom the importance and ubiquity of the characteristics, two indices used in quantitative linguistics (coverage rate and mean frequency) were employed. Such a complex approach enabled to reveal the existence of 15 possible worlds of Louis XI in the novel. Two-thirds of them are primary possible worlds created via direct description of the image by the author, and one-third is secondary possible worlds, where the King is depicted indirectly by presenting the vantage point of other characters who appraise Louis and express their attitude to him. The most important characteristics of Louis emphasized by the author and featuring in the maximum number of his possible world create a portrait of a skillful medieval monarch. Being sly, he hypocritically conceals his true cruel and mercenary aspirations and generally succeeds in presenting himself to others as a devout Christian and wise ruler acting for the benefit of his subjects, which is vindicated by the prevalence of his positively charged descriptions. Thus, the image created by W. Scott in his novel lives up to the reputation of Universal Spider—the symptomatic nickname that this historical figure earned from his contemporaries.

English Loanwords in Mongolian Usage

Many authors have examined the influence of loanwords in languages using statistical methods. However, English loanwords in Mongolian are rarely studied in quantitative linguistics. The results of the present study show that English loanwords in Mongolian share the universal feature of other tested languages, as their frequency distribution abides by Zipf’s Law. In addition, we define and test nine English loanword models depending on borrowing method and parts of speech, and find that the results can be described using a power function.

Demonstrating change from a drop-in space soundscape exhibit by using graffiti walls both before and after

Abstract. Impact evaluation in public engagement necessarily requires measuring change. However, this is extremely challenging for drop-in activities due to their very nature. We present a novel method of impact evaluation which integrates graffiti walls into the experience both before and after the main drop-in activity. The activity in question was a soundscape exhibit, where young families experienced the usually inaudible sounds of near-Earth space in an immersive and accessible way. We apply two analysis techniques to the captured before and after data – quantitative linguistics and thematic analysis. These analyses reveal significant changes in participants' responses after the activity compared to before, namely an increased diversity in language used to describe space and altered conceptions of what space is like. The results demonstrate that the soundscape was surprisingly effective at innately communicating key aspects of the underlying science simply through the act of listening. The impacts also highlight the power of sonification in stimulating public engagement, which, through reflection, can lead to altered associations, perceptions, and understanding. Therefore, we show that this novel approach to drop-in activity evaluation, using graffiti walls both before and after the activity and applying rigorous analysis to this data, has the power to capture change and, thus, have a short-term impact. We suggest that commonly used evaluation tools suitable for drop-in activities, such as graffiti walls, should be integrated both before and after the main activity in general, rather than only using them afterwards as is typically the case.

Explain the law: When the evidence is not enough

Abstract The article responds to the current variability of research into linguistic laws and the explanation of these laws. We show basic features to approach linguistic laws in the field of quantitative linguistics and research on linguistic laws outside the field of language and text. Language laws are usually explained in terms of the language system—especially as economizing—or of the information structure of the text (Piantadosi 2014). One of the hallmarks of the transmission of linguistic laws outside the realm of language and text is that they provide other kinds of explanations (Torre et al. 2019). We want to show that the problem of linguistics in the explanation of linguistic laws lies primarily in its inability to clarify the internal structure of language material, and the influence of the theory or method used for sample processing on the result of law analysis—which was formulated by Peter Grzybek (2006). We would like to show that this is the reason why linguistics avoids explanations of linguistic laws.

Words of Warfare: Life of Mission Soldiers in the Perspective of Quantitative Linguistics

The paper focuses on the analysis of a sample of military language from the stylometric perspective. The corpus is the chronicle of the 8th Czech Armed Forces Guard Company, which operated at the Bagram Air Field base (BAF). We work on the assumptions that in the corpus, there will be (A) a prominent presence of military slang; (B) a high proportion of abbreviations; (C) frequent linguistic devices expressing mutuality and collectiveness of the soldiers’ enterprise. The texts were subjected to keyword and collocation analyses; these determined several stylistic features of theirs (such as use of English-based expressions, protocol-like language, or idiosyncratic collocations), which testify to the multifaceted character of the military chronicle genre.

‘Uniformity’ or ‘Dispersion’?—The evolution of Chinese poetic word categories’ distribution patterns

AbstractThe daily language in mainland China has experienced a shift from traditional Chinese language to modern mandarin Chinese at the beginning of the twentieth century. The Chinese poetry ‘revolution’started in the 1910s is considered as a turning point in the Chinese poetry evolution process due to the novel applications of the modern Chinese language. Many temporal poetic studies consider the poems written in traditional Chinese and modern Chinese as two different genres. The two genres are saliently different in rhyme, meter, theme, etc. We aim to detect the specific properties of the evolution process of Chinese poetry in terms of the word categories’ distribution patterns. For the purpose, a corpus with 438 randomly selected traditional and modern Chinese poems is built, and some quantitative language indicators (entropy, relative entropy, repeat rate) and some exploratory statistical analysis techniques applicable in corpus linguistics and quantitative linguistics (one-way ANOVA test, cluster analysis)1 are used to abstract and analyze language data from the corpus. It is concluded that the word categories are distributed significantly differently in traditional poetry and modern poetry. The sound reasons would be that (1) traditional Chinese poetry is more likely to focus on the application of some specific content word categories, for example, nouns, but not auxiliary words and (2) modern poems tend to choose more categories of words. From the perspective of word class distribution patterns, we suppose that the birth of modern Chinese poetry in the 1910s is a sharp change to Chinese poetry production.