Can Menzerath's law be a criterion of complexity in communication?

Menzerath's law is a quantitative linguistic law which states that, on average, the longer is a linguistic construct, the shorter are its constituents. In contrast, Menzerath-Altmann's law (MAL) is a precise mathematical power-law-exponential formula which expresses the expected length of...

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Autores principales:	Iván G Torre, Łukasz Dębowski, Antoni Hernández-Fernández
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	EN
Publicado:	Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2021
Materias:	Medicine R Science Q
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/b290498c68564d13ae3248b667ea53d5
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spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:b290498c68564d13ae3248b667ea53d52021-12-02T20:17:41ZCan Menzerath's law be a criterion of complexity in communication?1932-620310.1371/journal.pone.0256133https://doaj.org/article/b290498c68564d13ae3248b667ea53d52021-01-01T00:00:00Zhttps://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0256133https://doaj.org/toc/1932-6203Menzerath's law is a quantitative linguistic law which states that, on average, the longer is a linguistic construct, the shorter are its constituents. In contrast, Menzerath-Altmann's law (MAL) is a precise mathematical power-law-exponential formula which expresses the expected length of the linguistic construct conditioned on the number of its constituents. In this paper, we investigate the anatomy of MAL for constructs being word tokens and constituents being syllables, measuring its length in graphemes. First, we derive the exact form of MAL for texts generated by the memoryless source with three emitted symbols, which can be interpreted as a monkey typing model or a null model. We show that this null model complies with Menzerath's law, revealing that Menzerath's law itself can hardly be a criterion of complexity in communication. This observation does not apply to the more precise Menzerath-Altmann's law, which predicts an inverted regime for sufficiently range constructs, i.e., the longer is a word, the longer are its syllables. To support this claim, we analyze MAL on data from 21 languages, consisting of texts from the Standardized Project Gutenberg. We show the presence of the inverted regime, not exhibited by the null model, and we demonstrate robustness of our results. We also report the complicated distribution of syllable sizes with respect to their position in the word, which might be related with the emerging MAL. Altogether, our results indicate that Menzerath's law-in terms of correlations-is a spurious observation, while complex patterns and efficiency dynamics should be rather attributed to specific forms of Menzerath-Altmann's law.Iván G TorreŁukasz DębowskiAntoni Hernández-FernándezPublic Library of Science (PLoS)articleMedicineRScienceQENPLoS ONE, Vol 16, Iss 8, p e0256133 (2021)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	EN
topic	Medicine R Science Q
spellingShingle	Medicine R Science Q Iván G Torre Łukasz Dębowski Antoni Hernández-Fernández Can Menzerath's law be a criterion of complexity in communication?
description	Menzerath's law is a quantitative linguistic law which states that, on average, the longer is a linguistic construct, the shorter are its constituents. In contrast, Menzerath-Altmann's law (MAL) is a precise mathematical power-law-exponential formula which expresses the expected length of the linguistic construct conditioned on the number of its constituents. In this paper, we investigate the anatomy of MAL for constructs being word tokens and constituents being syllables, measuring its length in graphemes. First, we derive the exact form of MAL for texts generated by the memoryless source with three emitted symbols, which can be interpreted as a monkey typing model or a null model. We show that this null model complies with Menzerath's law, revealing that Menzerath's law itself can hardly be a criterion of complexity in communication. This observation does not apply to the more precise Menzerath-Altmann's law, which predicts an inverted regime for sufficiently range constructs, i.e., the longer is a word, the longer are its syllables. To support this claim, we analyze MAL on data from 21 languages, consisting of texts from the Standardized Project Gutenberg. We show the presence of the inverted regime, not exhibited by the null model, and we demonstrate robustness of our results. We also report the complicated distribution of syllable sizes with respect to their position in the word, which might be related with the emerging MAL. Altogether, our results indicate that Menzerath's law-in terms of correlations-is a spurious observation, while complex patterns and efficiency dynamics should be rather attributed to specific forms of Menzerath-Altmann's law.
format	article
author	Iván G Torre Łukasz Dębowski Antoni Hernández-Fernández
author_facet	Iván G Torre Łukasz Dębowski Antoni Hernández-Fernández
author_sort	Iván G Torre
title	Can Menzerath's law be a criterion of complexity in communication?
title_short	Can Menzerath's law be a criterion of complexity in communication?
title_full	Can Menzerath's law be a criterion of complexity in communication?
title_fullStr	Can Menzerath's law be a criterion of complexity in communication?
title_full_unstemmed	Can Menzerath's law be a criterion of complexity in communication?
title_sort	can menzerath's law be a criterion of complexity in communication?
publisher	Public Library of Science (PLoS)
publishDate	2021
url	https://doaj.org/article/b290498c68564d13ae3248b667ea53d5
work_keys_str_mv	AT ivangtorre canmenzerathslawbeacriterionofcomplexityincommunication AT łukaszdebowski canmenzerathslawbeacriterionofcomplexityincommunication AT antonihernandezfernandez canmenzerathslawbeacriterionofcomplexityincommunication
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Can Menzerath's law be a criterion of complexity in communication?

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