Patterns in syntactic dependency networks

Many languages are spoken on Earth. Despite their diversity, many robust language universals are known to exist. All languages share syntax, i.e., the ability of combining words for forming sentences. The origin of such traits is an issue of open debate. By using recent developments from the statist...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Ferrer Cancho, Ramon|||0000-0002-7820-923X, Solé Vicente, Ricard, Köhler, Reinhard
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2004
País:España
Institución:Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC)
Repositorio:UPCommons. Portal del coneixement obert de la UPC
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:upcommons.upc.edu:2117/175747
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/2117/175747
https://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.69.051915
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Computational linguistics
Graph theory
Syntactic dependency networks
Statistical physics
Complex networks
Small world phenomenon
Syntax organization
Lingüística computacional
Grafs, Teoria de
Àrees temàtiques de la UPC::Informàtica::Intel·ligència artificial::Llenguatge natural
Descripción
Sumario:Many languages are spoken on Earth. Despite their diversity, many robust language universals are known to exist. All languages share syntax, i.e., the ability of combining words for forming sentences. The origin of such traits is an issue of open debate. By using recent developments from the statistical physics of complex networks, we show that different syntactic dependency networks (from Czech, German, and Romanian) share many nontrivial statistical patterns such as the small world phenomenon, scaling in the distribution of degrees, and disassortative mixing. Such previously unreported features of syntax organization are not a trivial consequence of the structure of sentences, but an emergent trait at the global scale.