[CaCL] [FINAL] 3/23 Dependency locality as an explanatory principle for word order

[Oh, Byung-Doh]

Hello everyone,

Sorry about the spam, but just in case some people are on this list but not on the lingosu list. Let's discuss the following paper in preparation for the Gibson talk on Friday...

Dependency locality as an explanatory principle for word order
http://tedlab.mit.edu/tedlab_website/researchpapers/Futrell_Levy_Gibson_2020.pdf
This work focuses on explaining both grammatical universals of word order and quantitative word-order preferences in usage by means of a simple efficiency principle: dependency locality. In its simplest form, dependency locality holds that words linked in a syntactic dependency (any head–dependent relationship) should be close in linear order. We give large-scale corpus evidence that dependency locality predicts word order in both grammar and usage, beyond what would be expected from independently motivated principles, and demonstrate a means for dissociating grammar and usage in corpus studies. Finally, we discuss previously undocumented variation in dependency length and how it correlates with other linguistic features such as head direction, providing a rich set of explananda for future linguistic theories.

Best,
Byung-Doh

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Byung-Doh Oh (he/him/his)
Ph.D. Student
Department of Linguistics
The Ohio State University

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