Quantitative Analysis of Dependency Structures

Russkom Jazyke vs Problemy I Rešenija) and an unnecessary mixing of transliteration rules (s, sh), and in the Cataloguing in Publication (CIP) one finds an illegible writing of the Russian names of the editors, which is surely not the fault of the editors. In sum, this volume gives a good overview of the current state of the art in empirical linguistics, relying heavily on the particular subset of statistical methods applied. However, the title of the volume is at least partly misleading, since any links to current studies on Russian and quantitative Russian linguistics are missing. The focus is clearly placed on (statistical) corpus linguistics, wherein – as this volume shows – statistical methods can doubtlessly be applied fruitfully, albeit mainly embedded as an inductive tool with which to obtain general empirical tendencies. Taking into account the rich tradition of Russian quantitative linguistics – represented by outstanding scholars such as R. G. Piotrovskij, M. V. Arapov, J. A. Tuldava and J. K. Krylov, among many others – this volume seems to represent a ‘new’ beginning of the application of quantitative methods of Russian, but by no means of post-Soviet and Russian linguistics in general.