POWER LAWS AND OTHER HEAVY-TAILED DISTRIBUTIONS IN LINGUISTIC TYPOLOGY

Gerhard Jäger ()
Additional contact information
Gerhard Jäger: Institute of Linguistics, University of Tübingen, Wilhelmstr. 19, 72074 Tübingen, Germany

Advances in Complex Systems (ACS), 2012, vol. 15, issue 03n04, 1-21

Abstract: The paper investigates the quantitative distribution of language types across languages of the world. The studies are based on three large-scale typological data bases: The World Color Survey, the Automated Similarity Judgment Project data base, and the World Atlas of Language Structures. The main finding is that a surprisingly large and varied collection of linguistic typologies show power law behavior. The bulk of the paper deals with the statistical validation of these findings.

Keywords: Linguistics; typology; power laws (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0219525911500196
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wsi:acsxxx:v:15:y:2012:i:03n04:n:s0219525911500196

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from

DOI: 10.1142/S0219525911500196

Access Statistics for this article

Advances in Complex Systems (ACS) is currently edited by Frank Schweitzer

More articles in Advances in Complex Systems (ACS) from World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tai Tone Lim ().