phenomenon · claim-type · cross-domain-transfer · mechanism · claim-relation · replication-status · limitation — grounded in the full text| phenomenon | corpus-based typology— “The core idea of corpus-based typology is to take languages as populations of utterances and to systematically investigate text production across languages in this sense.” | |
| claim-type | existence— “Corpus-based studies have become increasingly common in linguistic typology over recent years, amounting to the emergence of a new field that we call corpus-based typology.” | |
| method — evidence | — “In this article we describe some of the key insights that systematic investigations of language usage—as undertaken in corpus linguistics—contribute to our understanding of diverse and universal aspects of the near 7,000 human languages in the world.” | |
| mechanism | Conventionalised orders minimise total dependency length, and because a dependent tree then sits closer to the higher head it hangs from, harmonic (cross-domain aligned) word order falls out as a by-product.— “The general conclusion is that DLM as observable in corpora provides an overall explanation for harmonic word order correlations observed in GBT, because head dependency trees occur overall closer to the higher-level heads of which they are dependents.” | mechanisms[0] |
| mechanism | Keeping a head adjacent to the head of its dependent lets the hearer recognise higher-order constituency sooner, which is why languages converge on harmonic orders.— “propose that head adjacency as sketched above is preferable for language processing because it allows a recipient to recognize the constituency of higher-order phrases more immediately” | mechanisms[1] |
| mechanism | Nouns anchor referring expressions and so open a wider set of lexical and referential choices, making them harder to plan, which shows up as slower speech and pausing just before them.— “They explain this finding in terms of greater planning difficulties associated with nouns, which serve as the core of referring expressions and whose production thus entails a larger range of lexical and referential choices (Arnold 2008) than is common with verbs.” | mechanisms[2] |
| builds-on | Haig et al. (2011)— “We term the joint advances of corpus-based studies in linguistic typology corpus-based typology (CBT) (Haig et al. 2011) and contrast it with grammar-based typology (GBT).3” | claim_relations[0] |
| contradicts | Du Bois (1987) discourse ergativity— “Investigating a larger range of spoken-language original text corpora from Multi-CAST, Haig & Schnell (2016) and Schnell et al. (2021) do not find support for discourse ergativity” | claim_relations[1] |
| sense | language - AS A POPULATION OF UTTERANCE TOKENS: the corpus-based conception, in which an individual corpus is a SAMPLE of that population rather than the language itself— “CBT conceives of languages as populations of utterance tokens and their component parts rather than as monolithic entities shared by all members of a speech community. Individual language corpora are thus samples of utterance populations, each associated with different linguistic conventions.” | senses[0] |
| sense | language - AS A MONOLITHIC ENTITY shared by all members of a speech community: the conception the corpus-based view is explicitly defined against— “rather than as monolithic entities shared by all members of a speech community.” | senses[1] |
| sense | word order - a CATEGORICAL property in some languages and a probabilistic one in most: Tamil at 0% and Arabic at 100% VO, while most languages show variability with a preference— “First, some languages have absolutely fixed word order rules and these are reflected as categorical distributions, with Tamil, for instance, showing 0% and Arabic 100% VO orders. Although most languages show some variability in VO order, most of these also show a clear preference for one order or the other.” | senses[2] |
| edge | corpus-based typology —contrasted-with→ grammar-based typology— “We term the joint advances of corpus-based studies in linguistic typology corpus-based typology (CBT) (Haig et al. 2011) and contrast it with grammar-based typology (GBT).3 CBT conceives of languages as populations of utterance tokens and their component parts rather than as monolithic entities shared by all members of a speech… | concept_edges[0] |
| for which use | limitation — the DLM comparison specifically: MORE DETAILED INVESTIGATIONS ARE REQUIRED, these being INITIAL OBSERVATIONS— “Although more detailed investigations are required, these initial observations suggest that spoken texts fail to exhibit the prerequisite for DLM effects, namely phrases/local dependency trees of sufficient length.” | limitations[0] |
| for which use | limitation — every crosslinguistic corpus result in the field: THE MOST PRESSING ISSUE IN CBT IS THE REPRESENTATIVENESS OF CORPORA USABLE FOR CROSSLINGUISTIC RESEARCH— “The most pressing issue in CBT is the representativeness of corpora usable for crosslinguistic research.” | limitations[1] |
| for which use | limitation — any claim about spoken or conversational language: THERE IS A BLATANT SHORTAGE OF SPOKEN-LANGUAGE DATA FROM A LARGER RANGE OF LANGUAGES, [and] EVEN LESS INTERACTIONAL LANGUAGE USE— “Not only is there a blatant shortage of spoken-language data from a larger range of languages, but there is even less interactional language use (i.e., conversations) represented in any currently available corpora in CBT.” | limitations[2] |
| for which use | limitation — any crosslinguistic generalisation drawn from these corpora: the review names more representative corpora including spoken or signed texts as a remaining challenge for the field— “We also consider remaining challenges for corpus-based typology, in particular the development of crosslinguistically more representative corpora that include spoken (or signed) texts” | limitations[3] |
| for which use | limitation — the coverage of stimuli-based elicited texts in this field: they are crucial for projects needing comparability, and the review states they are rarely published as organized web-accessible corpora and often not openly accessible— “However, these kinds of texts are rarely published in the form of organized web-accessible corpora and in many cases are not openly accessible at all” | limitations[4] |
| replication | untested | |
| limitation | The authors' own exploratory comparison of noun-phrase lengths in Universal Dependencies versus Multi-CAST is presented as preliminary.— “Although more detailed investigations are required, these initial observations suggest that spoken texts fail to exhibit the prerequisite for DLM effects, namely phrases/local dependency trees of sufficient length.” | limitations[0] |
| limitation | Corpus representativeness is identified as the field's most pressing unsolved problem.— “The most pressing issue in CBT is the representativeness of corpora usable for crosslinguistic research.” | limitations[1] |
| limitation | Spoken and especially interactional language use is badly under-represented in available corpora.— “Not only is there a blatant shortage of spoken-language data from a larger range of languages, but there is even less interactional language use (i.e., conversations) represented in any currently available corpora in CBT.” | limitations[2] |
| limitation | The review names its field's outstanding problem as the corpora themselves: they are not yet crosslinguistically representative, and spoken or signed texts are what is missing.— “We also consider remaining challenges for corpus-based typology, in particular the development of crosslinguistically more representative corpora that include spoken (or signed) texts” | limitations[3] |
| limitation | The texts that would be comparable are frequently not obtainable, and copyright is named as one of the reasons, so what can be compared is set by access rather than by the research question.— “However, these kinds of texts are rarely published in the form of organized web-accessible corpora and in many cases are not openly accessible at all” | limitations[4] |
finding · quantity · variable · definition · key-term — grounded in the full text| finding | Corpus-based typology largely reproduces the classifications of grammar-based typology, but adds finer-grained, quantitatively explicit detail and robustness.— “Thus, CBT findings largely confirm GBT findings but lend more empirical detail and robustness to observations of regularities.” | content_tags.findings[0] |
| finding | In the authors' own comparison, long noun phrases are far commoner in the written Universal Dependencies corpora (about 36% of NPs at least four dependencies long) than in the spoken Multi-CAST corpora (about 12%).— “with approximately 36% of NPs [standard deviation (SD) = 15%] being l ≥ 4 dependencies in length in the former and only approximately 12% (SD = 9%) in the latter” | content_tags.findings[1] |
| finding | Spoken texts seem to lack the prerequisite for DLM effects: phrases or local dependency trees long enough for dependency length to matter.— “these initial observations suggest that spoken texts fail to exhibit the prerequisite for DLM effects, namely phrases/local dependency trees of sufficient length” | content_tags.findings[2] |
| finding | Across 12 spoken corpora, subjects inside a same-subject reference chain are about 15-20% likelier to be realised as zero than subjects elsewhere, regardless of the language's overall zero rate.— “a linear regression fit to the data (see the dashed gray line in Figure 2)11 suggests that with only a few exceptions, chain-medial subjects are… | content_tags.findings[3] |
| finding | Nearly every language with a zero-subject rate above 70% has fully grammaticalised, transparent subject agreement, the exceptions being Mandarin and Jinghpaw. | content_tags.findings[4] |
| finding | Haig & Schnell (2016) and Schnell et al. (2021) find no support for discourse ergativity: S shows a lower rate of newness and full-NP expression than P. | content_tags.findings[5] |
| finding | Slower articulation and pausing are significantly more likely just before nouns than before verbs. Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.findings[6] |
| finding | Word-order entropy trades off against case marking: the less confusable subject and object are by case, the freer their relative order. Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.findings[7] |
| finding | The largest annotated multilingual resource is typologically skewed - 24 million tokens across 104 languages, more than half of them Indo-European. Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.findings[8] |
| finding | Spoken-language data are scarce in corpus-based typology, and conversational data scarcer still. Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.findings[9] |
| quantity | 36% ... 12% — share of noun phrases at least four dependencies long in the written UD corpora versus the spoken Multi-CAST corpora Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.quantities[0] |
| quantity | 15–20% — extra likelihood that a chain-medial subject is zero rather than a pronoun, compared with subjects outside a same-subject chain Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.quantities[1] |
| quantity | β1 = 0.84 — regression coefficient of the fit relating zero rates inside versus outside same-subject chains, with intercept 24.77 Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.quantities[2] |
| quantity | 1,257 — languages covered by the Parallel Bible Corpus, averaging 10,707 verses per language Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.quantities[3] |
| quantity | 464 — languages for which a Universal Declaration of Human Rights translation exists, averaging 1,694 words each Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.quantities[4] |
| quantity | 24 million — word tokens in Universal Dependencies v2.7, spread over 104 languages of which over half are Indo-European Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.quantities[5] |
| quantity | 131,574 — mean word-token size of an individual language corpus in Universal Dependencies Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.quantities[6] |
| quantity | 143 ... 74 — UD corpora, and languages they come from, used in the authors' own NP-length analysis after excluding 37 with under 1,000 data points Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.quantities[7] |
| variable | NP length (dependent) Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.variables[1] |
| variable | proportions of zeros (dependent) Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.variables[2] |
| definition | corpus-based typology (CBT) Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.definitions[0] |
| definition | grammar-based typology (GBT) Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.definitions[2] |
| definition | parallel text corpora Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.definitions[3] |
| definition | parallax text corpora Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.definitions[4] |
| definition | original text corpora Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.definitions[5] |
| definition | dependency length minimization (DLM) Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.definitions[6] |
| definition | discourse ergativity Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.definitions[7] |
| concept | corpus-based typology Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | concepts[0] |
| concept | utterance populations Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | concepts[1] |
| concept | grammar-based typology Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | concepts[2] |
| regression β | as written: a linear regression fit to the data Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.statistics[0] |
| mean | as written: The mean individual language corpus size Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.statistics[1] |
| standard deviation SD | as written: standard deviation (SD) = 15% Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.statistics[2] |
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