Use Of Function Words Research Articles

Prominent User Segments in Online Consumer Recommendation Communities: Capturing Behavioral and Linguistic Qualities with User Comment Embeddings

Online conversation communities have become an influential source of consumer recommendations in recent years. We propose a set of meaningful user segments which emerge from user embedding representations, based exclusively on comments’ text input. Data were collected from three popular recommendation communities in Reddit, covering the domains of book and movie suggestions. We utilized two neural language model methods to produce user embeddings, namely Doc2Vec and Sentence-BERT. Embedding interpretation issues were addressed by examining latent factors’ associations with behavioral, sentiment, and linguistic variables, acquired using the VADER, LIWC, and LFTK libraries in Python. User clusters were identified, having different levels of engagement and linguistic characteristics. The latent features of both approaches were strongly correlated with several user behavioral and linguistic indicators. Both approaches managed to capture significant variability in writing styles and quality, such as length, readability, use of function words, and complexity. However, the Doc2Vec features better described users by varying level of contribution, while S-BERT-based features were more closely adapted to users’ varying emotional engagement. Prominent segments revealed prolific users with formal, intuitive, emotionally distant, and highly analytical styles, as well as users who were less elaborate, less consistent, but more emotionally connected. The observed patterns were largely similar across communities.

Study on the Influence of Yu-kwangchung’s Translation on His Creation from the Perspective of the use of Function Words

Yu-kwangchung is not only an outstanding writer, poet and critic, but also a translator with rich translation experience, proficient in Chinese and western literature. In his long-term literary creation and translation practice, he has formed his own unique translation theory. Meanwhile, his translation practice has influenced his literary creation style and provided the impetus for his literary creations. This paper attempts to take Yu-kwangchung’s works as an example to study the Influence of Yu-kwangchung’s Translation on His Creation from the Perspective of the use of Function Words. The influence of translation on the translator's own literary creation has been discussed at home and abroad, such as Arthur Waley, Yan Fu and Fu Lei. However, most of these discussions focus on the macro level and lack of microscopic analysis. Therefore, it is necessary to explore the influence of Yu-kwangchung’s translation on his own creation in order to add a more detailed case evidence for the impact of translation on literary creation. As mentioned above, he is an ideal sample for my research because he was a prolific writer and translator. The analysis in this paper is composed of three parts. The first one is Yu’s influence of translation upon his literary creation respectively the influence on the application of preposition. The second one is the influence on the application of conjunction, and the third is influence on the application of article. In addition, the influence of this kind of translation on creation may also change with the change of time, which is reflected in the fact that this influence become obviously weaker when it is far away from the time of translation works. Through comparative analysis, this paper concludes that Yu-kwangchung's translation has played a leading and inspiring role in his own literary creation, enriched the diversity of his literary works and improved the aesthetic value of his works. On the other hand, Yu-kwangchung graduated from the department of foreign languages of Taiwan university and served as the director of the Spanish department of Taiwan university from 1972, during which he translated a large number of foreign languages, including English and Spanish. During this period, his creation content was influenced by western literature, and then some western themes appeared, such as self-cut poems. The number of lines was also more flexible, a feature of western poetry that he applied to his own literary work. The influence of translation on Yu-kwangchung's own creation is clearly reflected in this paper, especially in the use of function words, because English is quite different from Chinese. From the perspective of cultural exchange, it is of profound significance to study this kind of influence, because it promotes the integration of different languages and cultures. According to the author, this case study is of great significance to the controversial issue of translation and creation, because the evidence has been strongly verified in Yu-kwangchung's translation and literary creation, More importantly, this paper makes some supplement to the research on the influence of translation upon literary creation in the micro field.

The Main Characters’ Language Style Matching in To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before Movie

This research aimed to investigate the use of function words, verbal mimicry, and non-verbal language styles in assessing the alignment of language styles between individuals. The film "To All the Boys I Have Loved Before" (2018) was chosen as the subject of analysis, as it depicted social dynamics that resembled real-life situations on a smaller scale. By employing the Language Style Matching theory proposed by Bowen et al. (2017), the researcher successfully identified significant matches and consistent outcomes in relation to the film's conclusion. The research approach employed both quantitative and qualitative methods, allowing for the analysis of data while providing in-depth explanations. The study utilized a Mixed Method Research (MMR) approach and yielded a final Language Style Matching score of 0.91 for verbal mimicry, indicating a nearly perfect match. Two categories of Language Style Matching emerged from the analysis, namely verbal and non-verbal mimicry. The researcher identified twelve instances of non-verbal mimicry in the film, including six motor movements, three postures, two facial expressions, and one gaze. The findings of this study revealed that the main characters in "To All the Boys I've Loved Before," namely Peter Kavinsky and Lara Jean, exhibited mutual interest and compatibility.

:Experimental: American Literature and the Aesthetics of Knowledge

:<i>Experimental: American Literature and the Aesthetics of Knowledge</i>

Early grammar-building in French-speaking deaf children with cochlear implants: A follow-up corpus study.

One of the most consistent findings reported in the paediatric cochlear implant (CI) literature is the heterogeneity of language performance observed more in grammatical morphology than in lexicon or pragmatics. As most of the corpus studies addressing these issues have been conducted in English, it is unclear whether their results can be generalized to other languages. In particular, little is known about languages known for their grammatical complexity, such as French. The aim of this corpus study was to compare the productive use of function words (FWs) and some agreement features (AGRs) in children with CIs and children with typical development (TD) matched for mean length of utterance in words (MLUwords ), a general index of grammatical complexity, and auditory experience, as measured by hearing age (HA) and chronological age (CA), respectively. Natural speech samples from 116 monolingual French-speaking children, including 40 children with CIs followed longitudinally and 76 TD children, were collected. FWs and AGRs were analysed using a Part of Speech Tagger (POS-T) from the Child Language Data Exchange System (CHILDES). The two groups differed by 3 years for HA and CA. No effect of family socio-economic status (SES) was found in the CI group. Stepwise regression analyses showed that the two groups did not share the same predictors of MLUwords : plurals and determiners predicted MLUwords in children with CIs, at 2 and 3 years of HA, whereas feminine markers and subject-pronouns were found to best predict MLUwords in TD children at 2 and 3 years of CA. Structural equation models (SEMs), a combination of confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and path analysis, yielded a different hierarchical structure of grammatical relations (GRs). Selective difficulties affecting verbal clitics and other pronominal forms were found specifically in the CI group (object-pronouns, reflexive, relative and past participles). Dependency grammar analysis confirmed these contrasting developmental profiles in multiword utterances, such as preposition/nouns, subject/verbs, and verb/determiner/nouns. Atypical grammatical patterns in children with CIs reflect a specific architecture of syntactic dependencies of FWs underpinning morphological complexity and syntactic connectivity. Clinical implications are discussed for assessment and intervention planning. What is already known on this subject The productive use of FWs has been identified as a particular area of weakness in children with CIs compared with TD children. In addition, heterogenous grammatical performance has often been found after 1-3 years of CI use, regardless of demographic factors such as age at implantation, duration of deafness or SES. What this paper adds to existing knowledge Assessing the early building of FWs and AGRs in children with CIs helps to understand the syntactic complexity and hierarchical structure of their language. Since most corpus studies on grammatical morphology have been conducted in English, it is not clear whether their difficulties can be generalized to other languages. The French language has a system of FWs and inflections that determine the morphophonological properties of nominal and verbal forms. Early grammar learning in children with CIs born with profound deafness were compared with the two groups of TD children matched both for duration of auditory experience (i.e., HA of CI children, CA of TD children) and for MLUwords . We found a similar profile between groups at 2 years but not at 3 years for HA and CA. The two groups do not share the same predictors of MLUwords : namely, plurals and determiners for CI children versus feminine markers and subject pronouns for TD children. They show a different syntactic organization of GRs. Children with CIs struggle with selective difficulties affecting verbal clitics and pronominal forms (object-pronouns, reflexive, relative and past participles). Consistent with theories of morphophonological richness and syntactic connectivity, our results support the distributional learning hypothesis of language acquisition that infants and toddlers are sensitive to FWs and AGRs at an early age. Specific components of syntactic organization are disrupted in children with CIs. What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work? This work has potential clinical implications because it unravels the limitations of morphophonological processing in children with CIs. Its results highlight a specific difficulty in learning FWs and AGRs in a verbal inflectional morphology context.

О некоторых технико-юридических проблемах российского Уголовного кодекса

Since the adoption of the new Criminal Code of the Russian Federation in 1996, there has been an ongoing debate in the legal science about its structure, sections, chapters and individual articles. The Russian scientific school has made a serious contribution to the development of legal technology in criminal law. Many comments that resulted from the analysis of legal norms were taken into account by the legislator, but the ongoing modification of the criminal law of our country does not cause optimism among scientists. The transformation of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation is the result of criminal law policy, which today, unfortunately, is not without flaws. The defects of the legislative technology of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation are of a complex nature, originate in the conceptual approaches of the legislator (or in their internal inconsistency) and are manifested in detail in individual articles of the Criminal Code. We do not set a goal either to identify the nature of defects or to classify them, which in itself requires a more extensive study. However, some essentially typical technical and legal problems of criminal law are given. Attention is drawn to the inconsistency of sanctions, unclear mechanisms for their imposing, incorrect construction of dispositions, artificial creation of difficulties for law enforcement officer and judges, problems of understanding evaluative signs, and illogical use of function words (conjunctions). The article concludes that it is necessary to improve the legislative technology.

Product-Centered Language Style in Chinese Women Online Reviews.

The relationship of language style and online review has drawn increasing academic attention recently as it can provide customers with a guide to make the purchase. Extant research attaches importance to the language style that is presented in the use of function words, instead of product-related content words. This study aimed to examine the language style generated by customers’ comments relating to the product based on content words, that is, product-centered language style (PCLS). We built a corpus of Chinese women clothes online reviews to explore the general picture and distinct features of PCLS and the distinct feature of PCLS. A content-word-centered Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) in terms of product performance is established. PCLS is calculated based on the language style matching (LSM) algorithm. Our results show that the PCLS in women clothes online review is featured by diverse and polarized language styles among three groups of women clothes buyers, and the prioritized arrangement of words of importance contributes to the PCLS. The findings benefit the women clothes industry in which it can help companies quickly find the distinctive and the transition of PCLS and offer an approach for companies to indiscriminately look into the significance of the product category from the linguistic perspective, which can help with product sale strategy and product design.

Mental disorders on online social media through the lens of language and behaviour: Analysis and visualisation

Due to the worldwide accessibility to the Internet along with the continuous advances in mobile technologies, physical and digital worlds have become completely blended, and the proliferation of social media platforms has taken a leading role over this evolution. In this paper, we undertake a thorough analysis towards better visualising and understanding the factors that characterise and differentiate social media users affected by mental disorders. We perform different experiments studying multiple dimensions of language, including vocabulary uniqueness, word usage, linguistic style, psychometric attributes, emotions’ co-occurrence patterns, and online behavioural traits, including social engagement and posting trends.Our findings reveal significant differences on the use of function words, such as adverbs and verb tense, and topic-specific vocabulary, such as biological processes. As for emotional expression, we observe that affected users tend to share emotions more regularly than control individuals on average. Overall, the monthly posting variance of the affected groups is higher than the control groups. Moreover, we found evidence suggesting that language use on micro-blogging platforms is less distinguishable for users who have a mental disorder than other less restrictive platforms. In particular, we observe on Twitter less quantifiable differences between affected and control groups compared to Reddit.

Exploring longitudinal changes in lexical and syntactic features in beginning-level EFL learner writing

This study examined longitudinal changes in lexical and syntactic features in the writing of beginning-level learners in an English as a foreign language (EFL) context. Writing samples were produced by 90 Korean EFL undergraduate students, each of whom produced seven essays over an academic semester, totaling 630 essays. Lexical complexity was measured by lexical density, variation, and sophistication. Syntactic complexity was measured by global complexity, subordination, coordination, and noun phrase complexity. The findings indicate that over time, beginning-level learners showed developmental patterns in lexical features, such that they tended to produce more sophisticated content words and use more function words (e.g., pronouns and articles), which may be difficult for beginning-level learners to learn and use. The findings also indicate that lexical features progressed to a larger degree than syntactic features in beginning-level learners’ writing. In addition, competitive relationships were found between phrasal-level and clause-level complexity and between the use of function words and complex nominals. Last, the use of function words and complex nominals were interrelated, which indicates that changes in lexical and syntactic features appear to be interwoven, thus highlighting the importance of jointly accounting for lexical and syntactic features.

Function Words in Edgar Alan Poe’s A Dream Within A Dream: A Psychological Analysis

Language in general reflects the influence of the psychological state in human beings when they communicate with each other. All the aspects of language are involved in producing the state of mind of the speaker, including the simplest parts of speech. Function words are not an exception to this process. That is why there is a powerful connection that joins the function words with the psychological state of the speaker specially in literature, because in literature every word, article, punctuation carries both surface and hidden meanings. These hidden meanings are related to the psychological condition of the producer. Function words also reflect the cognitive architecture of the speaker. The study is supporting the cognitive reflection model. The aim is to show that the psychological state of the poet Edgar Alan Poe affected his use of the function words in his poem A Dream Within A Dream. It also aims at showing how it affected his use of function words to convey his message and both the surface and hidden meanings. The conclusions arrived at depend on the social psycholinguist’s views only.

Shakespeare and principal components analysis

Abstract The use of principal components analysis (PCA) in literary studies was pioneered by John Burrows. From him it was adopted by the New Oxford Shakespeare project team, who used it to support their controversial attributions of parts of Arden of Faversham to Shakespeare and parts of the Henry VI trilogy to Marlowe. This essay examines a representative sample of the PCA tests done using function words by that team. It observes that, as with their Zeta method, they used the unsound bisector line method of interpretation. By calculating information which they did not disclose, it finds that their decision to discard all but two principal components was not justified by the data they were using, putting into doubt their interpretations of the results. It shows that their test method is vulnerable by design to the making of false attributions and demonstrates this by a new experiment. By a further experiment, it shows that the PCA tests may be telling us that differences between characters are greater than those between authors, at least in the use of function words. It concludes that the PCA tests done by that project cannot be relied on; and, given the already demonstrated unreliability of their Zeta tests, these new findings invalidate all work presented in the influential book Shakespeare, Computers, and the Mystery of Authorship.

Eluraamatute arvutianalüüs – prooviuurimus / Computational analysis of Life Books – a probing study

Niipea, kui andmed muutuvad suurandmeteks, võib muutuda probleemiks lähilugemise abil tehtav analüüs: sellest võib saada lõputu protsess, mida uurija aju ei suuda enam hoomata. Osaliselt võib probleemi lahendada digihumanitaaria meetoditega: suurte, näiteks etnoloogia-alaste tekstihulkade kvantitatiivseks analüüsiks on võimalik kasutada mitmesuguseid töövahendeid. Näiteks programmi AntConc abil saab uurida nii sõnade sagedust kui jaotust tekstis. LIWC2015 abi on võimalik kasutada elulugude sentimendianalüüsis, programmi Stylo tekstide stilomeetrilises analüüsis. Selliste programmide kasulikkust katsetatakse siin suhteliselt väikese nn eluraamatute korpuse juures, et selgitada välja, kui väärtuslik võiks see tööriist olla peagi korpusesse lisanduva palju suurema tekstihulga puhul.&#x0D; &#x0D; As soon as “data” turn into “big data”, analysis by “close reading” can become a problem: it can become an endless process that eventually the brain of the researcher can no longer get a grip on. Methods of computational humanities can partially solve the problem: various tools can be used to make quantitative analyses of large amounts of text, for example in the field of ethnology or folklore. Various tools may be considered for such text analysis. For example, the program AntConc can be used to study word frequencies, as well as the distribution of concepts across the text. LIWC2015 can be used for sentiment analysis of life stories and show differences between genders (or generations) in telling life stories. Stylo may be used for the stylometric analysis of texts. The usefulness of such programs is tested here on a still relatively small corpus of so-called Life Books. The Life Books (“Levensboek”) is a project of Humanitas Foundation in Netherlands to publish limited edition booklets of life stories compiled from interviews with older people, recorded and edited by volunteers. This study is based on 19 digital Life Books – in fact still small enough for close reading and qualitative analysis. However, the intention here is to use the corpus as a pilot to see how valuable the tools can be for a much larger amount of texts that will be added in the near future. In this pilot I want to see to what extent the Life Books can be used for structural analysis, gender differences in narrative style and subject choice, sentiment analysis, recurring themes, distribution of motifs, and perhaps most importantly: thematic gaps. That is to say: which (important) issues are not raised by the storytellers?&#x0D; The experiment shows that it is possible to do research into narrative structures, although this could be much more refined in terms of events. Stylometric analysis with Stylo of male and female repertoires is rather tricky, because interviewers/editors can (very much) interfere as a filter here. Stylo looks for patterns in the use of function words to determine different styles, but Life Books are just not quoting narrators literally all the time, so in quite some cases linguistical features, like the use of function words, may not originate from the storytellers but from the editors.&#x0D; On the other hand, sentiment analysis in combination with gender, for example, is possible using LIWC2015: this tool can give a fair respresentation of emotions, relationships and related motifs in life stories. Furthermore, AntConc proves to be a useful tool to investigate the occurrence and distribution of themes and topics. Research into the lack of certain themes and motifs remains an interesting option as well.

Irresolution and Completeness in Lydia Davis’ « How I Know What I Like »

If the urge to write comes from the realization that, according to Maurice Blanchot, nothing can be done with words, reading Lydia Davis’ short stories demonstrates Blanchot’s further claim that reading is situated beyond and before comprehension. Davis, who translated Blanchot (as well as Leiris, Flaubert and Proust), is mostly known for her short, short stories, sometimes known as flash fiction or micro fiction. Though her work is not confined to short, short pieces, in each collection, they make up roughly 50-75% of the stories. Though her stories are short on character, scanty of plot, and vague or silent in regards to place, they are replete with meaning. In order to grasp the meaning, the reader must delve into the workings of English grammar, a domain that Davis, as a translator has probed with minute consideration. Paul De Man wrote that meaning is always displaced with regards to the meaning it initially intended1. This displacement is of course, the source of misunderstanding and eventual conflict. Davis works with this idea of displaced meaning in her stories, and her attention to language invites the reader to examine her stories down to the very morpheme, and in some cases down to the punctuation mark. The analysis of « How I Know What I Like » from Davis’ 2015 collection Can’t and Won’t will demonstrate through her use of function words, modality and punctuation how the very fleetingness of this short, short-story leaves an indelible impression on the reader.

WAYS OF RENDERING FUTURE TENSE FORMS FROM KAZAKH INTO ENGLISH

(BASED ON THE NOVEL “КӨШПЕНДІЛЕР”) Abstract. The article deals with the different types of transformation used in the process of translating from Kazakh into English by applying the principle of comparison. For the principle of comparison makes it possible for us to establish differences and similarities of heterogeneous languages as far as Kazakh and English languages are syntactically, morphologically and structurally different. Moreover, a close comparative study of languages not only helps us detect peculiarities of different languages but also directs us to a deeper analysis research results. English belongs to the Germanic group of language. The Kazakh pertains to the Turkic group of the Altaic family. Concerning the morphological type English is inflected and notable for its analytical character. Kazakh is an agglutinative language. As to grammar the principle means of expression in language possessing an analytical character is the order of the words and use of words and use of function words (function words, word order and intonation pattern). The grammatical inflections are the principal means used in Kazakh. Though the rest of grammatical means are also used but they are of less frequency than the grammatical inflections.

以功能語法構建的應用文教材對提高非華語學生功 能字詞運用的成效

以功能語法構建的應用文教材對提高非華語學生功 能字詞運用的成效

Beyond Consistency: Contextual Dependency of Language Style in Monolog and Conversation.

Language is highly dynamic: It unfolds over time, and we can use it to achieve a wide variety of communicative goals, from telling a story to trying to persuade another person. One aspect of language that has gained increasing popularity among researchers in the last several decades is the individual language style (LS) represented by an individual's use of function words (e.g., pronouns, articles). Previous approaches to LS mostly focus on LS of one individual in isolation, paying less attention to the fact that language emerges from interaction with others. The aim of this paper is twofold: First, we integrate LS into a dynamical theoretical framework and present an innovative methodological approach. Second, this paper aims to address how interactive conversation-as an aspect of the communicative setting-changes an individual's LS. We use recurrence quantification analysis to look at structure in patterns of LS in monologs and conversations of 118 participants. Our results showed that LS significantly differs from monolog to conversation, and post hoc analyses further revealed that the change in LS is greater for conflict than for friendly conversations. The difference between monologs and conversations is reflected more strongly in the dynamics (i.e., structure and complexity) of LS than the proportion of function words used. Theoretical implications and directions for future studies are discussed.

How do drivers recall positive and negative driving events? A quantitative approach to analysing driving diaries

Whilst diary studies are often analysed in a qualitative manner, quantitative methods which analyse the percentage of different types of language used in diary entries, now exist. From a driving perspective, this could arguably tell us more about the underlying psychological processes occurring when drivers reflect on their on-road experiences. As part of a larger project, the current study used a quantitative method of language analysis, known as word count analysis, to compare driver diaries in which positive and negative driving events were reflected upon. Results suggested that when describing positive events, drivers discuss them with more elaborate and descriptive language and focus on certainty and goal-driven processes. Negative events, however, had more of a social focus as indicated by an increased use of function words. These findings provide insights into the ways in which positive and negative driving events may be appraised. Additionally, drivers used more words indicating control and reward when describing positive driving events; this is discussed in consideration of how word count analyses can provide further insight into psychological process associated with emotion, such as appraisals.

Investigating Cognitive and Psycholinguistic Features of Translation Universals

Traditionally, translation is viewed as a reliable shield over linguistic diversity, one of the ways to ensure a target language survival. However, translation is also reported to distort a translated language due to introducing ‘the third code’ (Frawley, 1984) features. These “deforming tendencies” (Berman, 1985) destroy the translated language by erasing its natural pattern and by adding there a bundle of alien features that cause its lexical, syntactical, and stylistic deficiencies. The current study is aimed at detecting those destructive features treated in translation studies as “translation universals” (Chesterman, 2004). To this end, a psycholinguistic analysis was held to establish the use of language which is not the result of intentional, controlled processes and of which translators may not be aware. These subliminal translation-inherent processes can be traced in the use of function words that encode procedural meaning. Relevance Theory (Wilson &amp; Sperber, 1993) explains a conceptual-procedural distinction as a major distinction made between two types of linguistically encoded information. Conceptual information expressed by content words is viewed as encoding concepts whereas words with procedural meaning contribute to the derivation of implicatures, certain ways of processing propositions. Discourse connectives, conjunctions, prepositions, particles, pronouns, modal words constitute that group of function words with procedural meaning. To uncover certain variations in the use of these linguistic units, a parallel English-Ukrainian corpus made up of an 8,000-character excerpt from Franny by J.D. Salinger, its professional translation, and forty novice translators’ target versions, was compiled.&#x0D; The corpus data were processed by Textanz and SPSS computerized tools.&#x0D; The results of the psycholinguistic analysis proved that the Ukrainian versions as contrasted to the original text contained the following S-universals: implicitation expressed through the shortage of discourse markers of global coherence, simplification due to the lack of personal pronouns, decreased mean number of words per sentence, and greater number of sentences; normalization embodied in vernacular network impoverishment due to the decreased amount of pragmatic markers and fillers, explicitation due to higher lexical variety and density rates, and rationalization as a result of abundant marking of discourse relations.&#x0D; Conclusions. Taken together, these findings have significant implications for the understanding of how procedural information processing by novice translators is manifested in translation.

Kelaziman Kesalahan Berbahasa dalam Menulis Laporan Penelitian

Language is the main media to deliver an idea. The mistakes in the language used will produce the wrong idea. To avoid the wrong idea, it is not allowed to make a mistake in using the language. The fact found in PGSD – FKIP UKSW bachelor degree students’ experiment report shows there are lots of repeating mistakes. The common mistakes found in grammatical aspect, such as: 1) The mistakes in differentiating between preposition and prefix; 2) the mistakes in forming words, and 3) the mistakes in constructing sentences. Common mistakes happen in spelling, especially in writing the title and notes, and the last is in the diction aspect. The common mistakes in diction usually happen with the use of inefficient words, improper word meaning, and the use of function words.

Macroscopic linguistic features of the Chinese writing of deaf individuals

Deaf individuals usually face more challenges in reading and writing, because they are often deprived of adequate spoken input from their infancy. Research on the language features of deaf individuals’ writing is abundant. However, their language structures have as yet been unexplored. In order to address this subject, this article uses the holistic approach of complex network theory. This study builds three syntactic dependency networks, the intent being to capture the macroscopic linguistic features in writing of deaf individuals. Three networks are constructed: one is created from a treebank of texts produced by deaf individuals, and the other two are created from two treebanks of spoken and written language samples produced by hearing people. A dependency‐based theory of syntax is used. The results indicate that the language system of individuals with deafness is structurally similar to that of hearing people, especially to that of their spoken language, but individuals with deafness tend to have lower language proficiency in both syntactic and lexical aspects. The rigid use of function words and less diversity of vocabulary might be part of the reason for the observed differences.