This is the first book which brings together the fields of theoretical and empirical studies in syntax on the one hand and the methodology of quantitative linguistics on the other hand. The author provides the theoretical background for this enterprise on the basis of the philosophy of science and of linguistic considerations including a discussion of Chomsky’s attitude against the application of statistical methods to syntactic phenomena. He gives a short introduction into the aims and methods of the quantitative approach to linguistics in general and to syntax in particular. The following chapters inform the reader about the measurement of syntactic properties, possibilities to acquire empirical data from syntactically annotated text corpora and the most common mathematical models and methods for the analysis of syntactic and syntagmatic material. Then, a number of prominent approaches and hypotheses about interrelations between properties of syntactic constructions are presented and evaluated on material from various languages and text kinds. Finally, the theory of synergetic linguistics and its application to syntax is introduced including the integration of such famous hypotheses as Yngve’s depth hypothesis and Hawkins’s "Early immediate constituent" principle. The book concludes with a number of perspectives with respect to follow-up studies and extensions to the presented models with interfaces to neighbouring disciplines.

An Introduction to Syntactic Analysis and Theory offers beginning students a comprehensive overview of and introduction to our current understanding of the rules and principles that govern the syntax of natural languages. Includes numerous pedagogical features such as 'practice' boxes and sidebars, designed to facilitate understanding of both the 'hows' and the 'whys' of sentence structure Guides readers through syntactic and morphological structures in a progressive manner Takes the mystery out of one of the most crucial aspects of the workings of language – the principles and processes behind the structure of sentences Ideal for students with minimal knowledge of current syntactic research, it progresses in theoretical difficulty from basic ideas and theories to more complex and advanced, up to date concepts in syntactic theory

This book offers an original account of the dynamics of syntactic change and the evolving structure of Old Spanish that combines rigorous manuscript-based investigation, quantitative analysis and a syntactic approach grounded in Minimalist thinking. Its analysis of both successful and failed changes demonstrates the degree of unpredictability caused by the interaction of competing factors and will shed fresh light on the assumed unidirectionality of linguistic change. Importantly, it reveals that Old Spanish and modern Spanish are more similar to one another than is usually supposed and demonstrates that many of the differences between the two varieties are quantitative rather than qualitative. This theoretically sophisticated examination of historical corpora will provide an invaluable resource for students and scholars of Old and modern Spanish, historical linguistics, sociolinguistics and syntax.

Quantitative Methods in Linguistics offers a practical introduction to statistics and quantitative analysis with data sets drawn from the field and coverage of phonetics, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, historical linguistics, and syntax, as well as probability distribution and quantitative methods. Provides balanced treatment of the practical aspects of handling quantitative linguistic data Includes sample datasets contributed by researchers working in a variety of sub-disciplines of linguistics Uses R, the statistical software package most commonly used by linguists, to discover patterns in quantitative data and to test linguistic hypotheses Includes student-friendly end-of-chapter assignments and is accompanied by online resources at available in the 'Downloads' section, below

Dependency analysis is increasingly used in computational linguistics and cognitive science. Surprisingly, compared with studies based on phrase structures, quantitative methods and dependency structure are rarely integrated in research.This is the first book that collects original contributions which quantitatively analyze dependency structures across different languages and text genres.

This series of lectures provides an overview of the author's work on quantitative applications in cognitive linguistics by discussing a wide range of studies involving corpus-linguistic as well as experimental work. After a discussion of how corpus linguistics, cognitive linguistics, and psycholinguistics relate to each other, the author discusses empirical and statistical studies of a wide variety of phenomena including morphophonology (morphological blends and alliteration effects), corpus-based cognitive semantics, frequency and association at the syntax-lexis interface. The book concludes with chapters exemplifying the role that bottom-up approaches can take, the role of statistical methods more generally, and the role of converging evidence from corpus and experimental data.The lectures for this book were given at The China International Forum on Cognitive Linguistics in May 2013. In the e-book version all handouts have been made available at the back. All audio of the lectures as well as the handouts are available for free, in Open Access, here.

Using Stata for Quantitative Analysis is an applied, self-teaching resource. It is written in such a way that a reader with no experience with statistical software can sit down and be working with data in a very short amount of time. The author proposes to teach the language of Stata from an intuitive perspective, furthering students’ overall retention, using many screen shots from Stata to guide students.

Since the 1960s quantitative linguistics has undergone a great development marked especially by attempts to work systematically with language phenomena on all language levels. Besides traditional areas where significant results were already achieved before the 60s (phonology, graphemics and lexicology), quantitative linguistics has now also penetrated into morphology, syntax, stylistics, history and typology of languages and, more recently, into semantics. This book gives a comprehensive account of the various developments and applications in quantitative linguistics.After an overview of methods used in quantitative linguistics, it discusses the main areas: lexical statistics, grammatical statistics and semantics statistics, with reference to a great number of studies of different languages and language families. Chapter 4 deals with other domains (phonology, graphemics, stylistics, typology, development of languages, word-formation), Chapter 6 deals with various applications, and Chapter 7 discusses the relationship between quantitative linguistics and the computer. The volume is completed by an extensive list of references and indices of names and of subjects.

Over the past two decades, statistical and other quantitative concepts, models and methods have been increasingly gaining importance and interest in all areas of linguistics and text analysis, as well as in a number of neighboring disciplines and areas of application. The term "quantitative linguistics" comprises all scientific and technical approaches which use such terms and methods in the analysis of or work with language(s), texts and other related subjects. The 71 articles in this handbook, written by internationally-recognized experts, offer a broad, up-to-date overview of the scientific-theoretical principles, the history, the diversity of the subject areas studied, the methods and models used, the results obtained thus far and their applications. The articles are divided up into thirteen chapters: the first chapter includes contributions on the basic principles and the history of the field, nine additional chapters are dedicated to individual descriptions of the levels of linguistic research (from phonology to pragmatics) as well as typological, diachronic and geolinguistic questions. The next two chapters include a description of important models, hypotheses and principles; selected areas of application; and references to neighboring disciplines. The last portion of the handbook is an informative contribution, with information about publication forums, bibliographies, major projects, Internet links, etc. This handbook is useful not only for researchers, teachers and students of all branches of linguistics and the philologies, but also for scientists in neighboring fields, whose theoretical and empirical research touches on linguistic questions (for instance, psychology and sociology), or for those who want to make use of the proven methods or results from quantitative linguistics in their own research.

This is a textbook for introductory courses in quantitative research methods across the social sciences. It offers a detailed explanation of introductory statistical techniques and presents an overview of the contexts in which they should be applied.