Grammatical typology and frequency analysis: number availability and number use
The Smith-Stark hierarchy, a version of the Animacy Hierarchy, offers a typology of the cross-linguistic availability of number. The hierarchy predicts that the availability of number is not arbitrary. For any language, if the expression of plural is available to a noun, it is available to any noun...
| Main Authors: | , , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Polish Academy of Sciences
2013-12-01
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| Series: | Journal of Language Modelling |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://jlm.ipipan.waw.pl/index.php/JLM/article/view/69 |
| Summary: | The Smith-Stark hierarchy, a version of the Animacy Hierarchy, offers a typology of the cross-linguistic availability of number. The hierarchy predicts that the availability of number is not arbitrary. For any language, if the expression of plural is available to a noun, it is available to any noun of a semantic category further to the left of the hierarchy. In this article we move one step further by showing that the structure of the hierarchy can be observed in a statistical model of number use in Russian. We also investigate three co-variates: plural preference, pluralia tantum and irregularity effects; these account for an item's behaviour being different than that solely expected from its animacy position.
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| ISSN: | 2299-856X 2299-8470 |