Scientometrics
Volume/Issue:
Volume 90: Issue 2
Lotka phenomenon in the words’ syntactic distribution complexity
Authors:
Dongbo Wang Department of Information Management, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China

Search for other papers by Dongbo Wang in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed Close
,
Danhao Zhu Department of Information Management, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China

Search for other papers by Danhao Zhu in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed Close
, and
Xinning Su Department of Information Management, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China

Search for other papers by Xinning Su in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed Close
Pages:
483–498
Online Publication Date:
08 Nov 2011
Publication Date:
01 Feb 2012
Article Category:
Research Article
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-011-0546-z
Keywords:
Words’ syntactic distribution complexity; Lotka phenomenon; Treebank
Restricted access
Get Permissions

Abstract

To better understand the distribution of words in all kinds of syntactic structures, the paper calculates the word distribution in syntactic structures of both English and Chinese. On the basis of the calculation, the article presents the definition of the words’ syntactic distribution complexity. After arranging the Chinese and English words according to their own syntactic distribution complexity, respectively, the Lotka phenomenon can be clearly attested by the results. The discovery made in the paper reveals the law of the words’ syntactic distribution in linguistic studies on one hand and the statistically proven fact that Chinese words’ syntax is much more complex than that of the English after comparing the Lotka phenomenon of both Chinese and English words’ syntactic distribution complexity on the other hand.

  • Chen, Y 1988 Analysis of Lotka's law: The Simon-Yule approach. Information Processing & Management 25 05 527–544 .

  • Chen, X 1999 Chinese words’ classes from the perspective of automatic syntactic analysis. Language Teaching and Research 3:63–72.

  • Dik, S 1989 The theory of functional grammar Floris Dordrecht.

  • Egghe, L 1987 An exact calculation of Price's law for the law of Lotka. Scientometrics 11 1–2 81–97 .

  • Egghe, L 2005 Power laws in the information production process: Lotkaian informetrics Emerald Group Publishing Limited Bradford.

  • Egghe, L, Rousseau, R 1990 Introduction to Informetrics: quantitative methods in library, documentation and information science Elsevier Amsterdam.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Huber, J 1997 The underlying process generating Lotka'sLaw and the statistics of exceedances. Information Processing & Management 34 04 471–487 .

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Kalampakas, A 2007 The syntactic complexity of Eulerian graphs. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 4728:208–217 .

  • Kretschmer, H 1983 The reflection of LOTKA's law in the structure of citations of a journal. Scientometric 5 2 85–92 .

  • Kretschmera, H, Kretschmerb, T 2007 Lotka's distribution and distribution of co-author pairs’ frequencies. Journal of Informetrics 1 04 308–337 .

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Lotka, A-J 1926 The frequency distribution of scientific productivity. Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences 12:317–324.

  • Maienborn, C 2001 On the position and interpretation of locative modifiers. Natural Language Semantics 9 2 191–240 .

  • Pao, M 1985 Lotka's law: A testing procedure. Information Processing & Management 21 04 305–320 .

  • Quirk, R, Sidney, G et al. 1985 A comprehensive grammar of the English language Longman London.

  • Rao, R, Kedage, I 1988 Probability distributions and inequality measures for analyses of circulation data Elsevier Amsterdam.

  • Rousseau, R 1990 Relations between continuous versions of bibliometric laws. Journal of the American Society for Information 41 03 197–203 .

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Rousseau, R, Zhang, Q 1992 Zipf's data on the frequency of Chinese words revisited. Scientometrics 124 2 201–220 .

  • Stepanov, A, Tsa, WD 2008 Cartography and licensing of wh- adjuncts: a cross-linguistic perspective. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 26 3 589–638 .

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Uzuner, Ö, Katz, B 2005 A comparative study of language models for book and author recognition. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 3651:969–980 .

  • Zipf, G-K 1949 Human behaviour and the principle of least-effort Addison-Wesley Cambridge, MA.

  • Collapse
  • Expand
Cover Scientometrics
Scientometrics
Print ISSN:
0138-9130
Online ISSN:
1588-2861

Scientometrics
Language English
Size B5
Year of
Foundation		 1978
Volumes
per Year		 1
Issues
per Year		 12
Founder Akadémiai Kiadó
Founder's
Address		 H-1117 Budapest, Hungary 1516 Budapest, PO Box 245.
Publisher Akadémiai Kiadó
Springer Nature Switzerland AG
Publisher's
Address		 H-1117 Budapest, Hungary 1516 Budapest, PO Box 245.
CH-6330 Cham, Switzerland Gewerbestrasse 11.
Responsible
Publisher		 Chief Executive Officer, Akadémiai Kiadó
ISSN 0138-9130 (Print)
ISSN 1588-2861 (Online)

Monthly Content Usage

Abstract Views Full Text Views PDF Downloads
Jan 2025 32 0 0
Feb 2025 37 0 0
Mar 2025 47 0 0
Apr 2025 20 0 0
May 2025 17 0 0
Jun 2025 20 0 0
Jul 2025 0 0 0