Network science as a method of measuring language complexity

• Authors: Michael Vitevitch
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The physical, mathematical, and information sciences have developed a number of ways to measure complexity and complex systems in the social, biological, and physical domains. One way of measuring complex systems that might be useful to language scientists is the set of tools from the interdisciplinary field known as network science. A number of studies that have used the tools of network science to examine various aspects of language and language processing are summarized. It is acknowledged that much work must be done to use the tools of network science to address the debate about the (equal) complexity of languages. However, this work may prove useful to language scientists interested in the (equal) complexity of languages, as well as in other topics about language. Furthermore, the distinct structural characteristics observed in networks of several languages to date may also prove useful to network scientists as they try to understand how certain structural characteristics influence network dynamics in other domains. Language scientists are urged to embrace the techniques of network science to address the question of the complexity of languages.

Keywords

EN

language complexity; network science; complex network; small world network

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Journal: Poznań Studies in Contemporary Linguistics
• Year: 2014
• Volume: 50
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 197-205

Dates

received

2014-01-09

revised

2014-06-02

accepted

2014-06-02

online

2014-07-21

Contributors

author

Michael Vitevitch

• University of Kansas, Lawrence, United States

Identifiers

DOI

10.1515/psicl-2014-0014