Word Order Typology Interacts With Linguistic Complexity: A Cross-Linguistic Corpus Study

Area of Science:

• Linguistics
• Computational Linguistics
• Psycholinguistics

Background:

• Previous research suggests dependency distance minimization shapes word order preferences across languages.
• Corpus studies indicate languages generally favor shorter head-dependent distances.
• However, psycholinguistic studies show the comprehension system adapts to typological properties, potentially increasing structural complexity.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the role of word order typology in syntactic complexity.
• To examine how default word order and dependency direction influence linear and hierarchical distances.
• To assess the extent of linguistic adaptability to word order preferences.

Main Methods:

• Conducted a corpus study of 38 Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) and Subject-Object-Verb (SOV) languages.
• Analyzed dependency distances (linear and hierarchical) across various dependency types.
• Compared results for SVO and SOV languages, considering dependency direction.

Main Results:

• Dependency distance is significantly influenced by a language's default word order and dependency direction.
• Longer linear distances occur in structures that align with a language's default word order (e.g., SOV, SVO).
• Hierarchical distance also shows similar trends, with a tendency to avoid greater structural depth, indicating limited adaptability.

Conclusions:

• Linguistic adaptability to default word order preferences is limited.
• Findings support the role of linguistic exposure and working memory in sentence complexity.
• Future research should explore factors like morphological richness for a multifactor account of sentence complexity.