Syntactic Hierarchy Depth: Distribution, Interrelation and Cross-Linguistic Properties
Jiang Yang · Journal of Quantitative Linguistics · 2018
This paper, with data from five languages, focuses on discussing cross-linguistic syntactic hierarchy depth, including its probability distribution, interrelation with position and sentence length, and linguistic and cognitive properties regarding mean depth of syntactic hierarchy. It is found that: (1) syntactic hierarchy depth abides by the negative binomial distribution, (2) syntactic hierarchy depth is a power function of position and sentence length and the co-increase interrelation indicates that all languages have the universality of a depth saving principle but not necessarily based on the right-branching preference, (3) mean depth of syntactic hierarchy is an index of global syntactic complexity and a reflection of the capacity limit of working memory; syntactic hierarchy may be the principal but not the only way to reduce memory load. Mean depth may correlate as well with language typology.