Effects of Word Limit on Sentence Length and Clause Length in Academic Journal Article Abstracts: A Synergetic Linguistic Perspective

IF 0.7 2区 文学 0 LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS
Yue Li, Yuan Gao, Xiaofei Lu
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引用次数: 0

Abstract

ABSTRACTSeveral studies have sought to characterize the syntactic features of research articles (RAs) and their part-genres. However, no study has examined the interrelation between different syntactic components (e.g. sentences and clauses) in the RA genre as a function of interacting internal and external factors (e.g. word limit) from a synergetic linguistic perspective. This study contributes to this line of research by investigating the effects of word limit (i.e. the restriction on the number of words used) on the length of sentences and clauses in RA abstracts. Our results show that RA abstracts contain significantly more longer sentences and clauses than the main body of RAs, but longer sentences in RA abstracts tend to have shorter constituting clauses, indicating that the Menzerath-Altmann Law is at play. Such an interrelation between sentence and clause length helps ensure a cognitively balanced system. Our findings have implications for the need to explore the interrelation between syntactic components emergent from the synergetic interactions of internal and external factors.KEYWORDS: Academic journal article abstractMenzerath-Altmann Lawsentence-clause interrelationsynergetic linguisticsword limit AcknowledgmentsWe appreciate the editors and anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and suggestions.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1. We balanced AJAA and AJAB in terms of word tokens in this study. One reviewer recommended calculating the ratio of mean sentence (and clause) length for each abstract-body pair for the 26 RAs represented in the AJAB corpus and subsequently computing a mean ratio along with its 95% confidence interval. The results of this analysis are summarized in Appendix C. These results reveal similar patterns of differences as those reported in Table 2, with RA abstracts containing slightly longer sentences and slightly shorter clauses than RA bodies along with less variation, although the results appear inconclusive, possibly partially due to the relatively small number of pairs analysed and the smaller number of sentences in each abstract than in each body.2. We balanced AJAA and AJAB in terms of word tokens in this study. One reviewer recommended running the MAL fitting analysis on the 26 abstracts and bodies of the RAs represented in AJAB for comparison purposes. Appendix D presents the mean clause length (measured in words) for sentences with different lengths in the 26 abstracts and bodies of the RAs represented in AJAB, and Appendix E presents the MAL fitting results on these abstracts and bodies. Similar to the results presented in Table 5, the coefficients of determination were larger than 0.9 for both corpora, with the RA abstracts showing a larger coefficient (0.9637 vs. 0.9380). Different from the results in Table 5, the F value for the RA abstracts did not reach statistical significance, and the b value for the RA abstracts was larger than that for the RA bodies, likely due to the smaller number of data points (i.e. 3) for RA abstracts (see Appendix D).Additional informationFundingThis research was funded by two grants from Beijing Social Science Foundation (No. 18YYB002), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. E1E41701) to the corresponding author.
学术期刊论文摘要中字数限制对句子长度和子句长度的影响:协同语言学的视角
摘要一些研究试图对科研论文的句法特征及其部分体裁进行表征。然而,目前还没有研究从协同语言学的角度考察RA体裁中不同句法成分(如句子和分句)之间的相互关系是内外因素(如字数限制)相互作用的结果。本研究通过调查字数限制(即对使用字数的限制)对RA摘要中句子和分句长度的影响,为这一研究方向做出了贡献。我们的研究结果表明,RA摘要中包含的长句子和从句明显多于RA的主体,但RA摘要中的长句子往往有较短的构成从句,这表明Menzerath-Altmann定律在起作用。句子和子句长度之间的这种相互关系有助于确保认知系统的平衡。我们的研究结果表明,需要探索由内部和外部因素协同作用产生的句法成分之间的相互关系。关键词:学术期刊文章摘要menzerath - altmann Lawsentence-clause相互关系协同语言学剑限感谢编辑和匿名审稿人提出的建设性意见和建议。披露声明作者未报告潜在的利益冲突。在本研究中,我们在单词代币方面平衡了AJAA和AJAB。一位审稿人建议计算AJAB语料库中26个RAs的每个摘要-正文对的平均句子(和子句)长度的比率,然后计算平均比率及其95%置信区间。该分析的结果总结在附录c中。这些结果显示了与表2中报告的相似的差异模式,RA摘要比RA正文包含稍长的句子和稍短的分句,并且变化较小,尽管结果似乎不确定,部分原因可能是分析的对相对较少,并且每个摘要的句子数量少于每个正文2。在本研究中,我们在单词代币方面平衡了AJAA和AJAB。一位审稿人建议对AJAB中代表的26个RAs摘要和主体进行MAL拟合分析,以进行比较。附录D给出了AJAB中所代表的26个RAs摘要和主体中不同长度句子的平均子句长度(以单词为单位),附录E给出了这些摘要和主体的MAL拟合结果。与表5的结果相似,两种语料库的决定系数都大于0.9,RA摘要的决定系数更大(0.9637比0.9380)。与表5的结果不同,RA摘要的F值没有达到统计学意义,RA摘要的b值大于RA机构,这可能是由于RA摘要的数据点数量较少(即3个)(见附录D)。附加信息本研究由北京市社会科学基金(No. 18YYB002)和中央高校基本科研业务费(No. 18YYB002)两项资助资助。E1E41701),联系通讯作者。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
2.90
自引率
7.10%
发文量
7
期刊介绍: The Journal of Quantitative Linguistics is an international forum for the publication and discussion of research on the quantitative characteristics of language and text in an exact mathematical form. This approach, which is of growing interest, opens up important and exciting theoretical perspectives, as well as solutions for a wide range of practical problems such as machine learning or statistical parsing, by introducing into linguistics the methods and models of advanced scientific disciplines such as the natural sciences, economics, and psychology.
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