![]() ![]() All bound morphology is removed from morphologically complex words until only the bare stem is left. The stem-based approach represents the most radical form of morphological analysis. The calculation of word length is straightforward in this approach. By implication, it is predicated on the assumption that there is no relationship among the inflectional variants of a word, at least none which is fundamentally different from that among different derivatives of the same stem (e.g. The word-form-based approach faces none of these challenges because it does not impose any categorization. ![]() Moreover, the line separating the two may vary from language to language. This is not a trivial task as inflection and derivation are known to form a continuum (e.g. It relies on the feasibility of dissociating inflection from derivation. The lemma approach is confronted with the same problem as are lexicographers. It is not entirely clear how the length of such a main entry can be determined when the different variants are of unequal length. dative and allative) are collapsed and the frequency values of all variants are aggregated. singular, plural and possibly dual) and all case variants (e.g. In the case of nouns, all number variants (i.e. The lemma approach subsumes all inflectional variants under a single main entry. Three different options are conceivable: the lemma-based, the word-form-based and the stem-based approach. However, this is not the only possibility. That is, inflectional variants of the same word would be treated like two different words. It would seem natural for any usage-based analysis to consider nothing but surface forms. The discussion of word structure will be slightly more detailed especially as this variable has been given short shrift in the relevant literature. The result was always the same: no matter which historical period was considered, there was always a monotonic decrease in frequency as length increased. Similarly, different historical stages of German were studied by Best (1997), Kuhr and Müller (1997), Dittrich (1996), and Bartels and Strehlow (1997). Different texts types from Slovenian were examined by Antic et al. Pertinent examples include Ziegler’s (1996) syllable-based analysis of Brasilian Portuguese and Hatzigeorgiu et al.’s (2001) grapheme-based analysis of Greek. Largely for practical reasons, phoneme counts are less often performed. ![]() The two most commonly used methods of determining length are in terms of number of syllables and number of graphemes. In addition to language, several variables such as unit of measurement, genre, time and word structure were examined. Notwithstanding a considerable range of variation, numerous languages from a considerable number of different families have been found to exhibit a monotonic decrease in frequency with increasing word length (e.g. From the diachronic perspective, a word which undergoes an increase in frequency is predicted to undergo a decrease in length. From a synchronic perspective, a word is all the shorter, the higher its frequency. This law permits both a static and a dynamic interpretation. As is well-known, his Law of Abbreviation posits an inverse relationship between the length of a word and its usage frequency. Zipf (1965 ) is to be credited for having sparked one of the most vibrant fields of research in quantitative linguistics. ![]() Two principles are required to account for these results-a general dispreference for using long words and a language-particular dispreference for short words in the lexicon. There appears to be a notable effect of type frequency on the nature of the token frequency distribution: the greater the average length of the words in the lexicon, the higher the probability of a unimodal distribution. By contrast, all 10 languages exhibit a rise followed by a monotonic drop of the frequency curve in the type frequency analysis. The token frequency analysis reveals that 8 of the 10 languages show a monotonic decrease in frequency with increasing length while 2 languages reveal a unimodal distribution. These issues are examined on the basis of a non-representative sample of 10 languages. Much less is known about the relationship of word length and type frequency, let alone about the differential impact of type and token frequency on word length. Inspired by Zipf’s Law of Abbreviation, previous research was mostly directed at the interaction of word length and token frequency. ![]()
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