The effects of length and complexity on constituent ordering in written English

• Autorzy: Hua Wang , Haitao Liu
• Języki publikacji: EN

Abstrakty

EN

Based on the written part of the British Component of International Corpus of English (ICE-GB), this paper investigates the interrelationship between length and complexity of sentential constituents and their positions in the sentence. Results show that length and complexity affect sentential constituent ordering. Within the sentence, the longest and the most complex constituents tend to occur in the final position, and the relatively shorter and less complex constituents tend to be in the initial position. However, for sentential constituents in other positions, the length-complexity-position relationship appears to be random. Possible explanations for the findings are provided from different perspectives, especially from the distribution of given and new information.

Słowa kluczowe

EN

corpus; length; complexity; constituent ordering; information structure

• Wydawca: De Gruyter
• Czasopismo: Poznań Studies in Contemporary Linguistics
• Rocznik: 2014
• Tom: 50
• Numer: 4
• Strony: 477-494

Daty

zaakceptowano

2013-10-22

otrzymano

2014-03-30

poprawiono

2014-10-01

online

2014-11-14

Twórcy

autor

Hua Wang

• Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China

autor

Haitao Liu

• Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China,
• Zhejiang University, Ningbo, China

Identyfikatory

DOI

10.1515/psicl-2014-0024