Universal Entropy of Word Ordering Across Linguistic Families
Author Information
Author(s): Marcelo A. Montemurro, Damián H. Zanette
Primary Institution: The University of Manchester
Hypothesis
The impact of word ordering in the structure of language is a statistical linguistic universal.
Conclusion
Despite differences in structure and vocabulary, the impact of word ordering in language is a universal statistical feature.
Supporting Evidence
- The relative entropy quantifying word ordering presented an almost constant value for all linguistic families analyzed.
- Empirical evidence suggests that the impact of word ordering is a robust universal feature across languages.
- Variability in total entropy was significantly larger than variability in relative entropy across languages.
Takeaway
This study shows that all languages, no matter how different, have a similar way of organizing words that helps us understand how we communicate.
Methodology
The study computed a relative entropy measure to quantify the degree of ordering in word sequences from various languages.
Limitations
The analysis was limited to eight languages from five linguistic families and one language isolate.
Statistical Information
P-Value
p<10−5
Statistical Significance
p<0.05
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
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