Artikel

Laws and Theories in Quantitative Linguistics

According to a widespread conception, quantitative linguistics will eventually be able to explain empirical quantitative findings (such as Zipf’s Law) by deriving them from highly general stochastic linguistic ‘laws’ that are assumed to be part of a general theory of human language (cf. Best (1999) for a summary of possible theoretical positions). Due to their formal proximity to methods used in the so-called exact sciences, theoretical explanations of this kind are assumed to be superior to the supposedly descriptive-only approaches of linguistic structuralism and its successors. In this paper I shall try to argue that on close inspection such claims turn out to be highly problematic, both on linguistic and on science-theoretical grounds.

Laws and Theories in Quantitative Linguistics

Urheber*in: Meyer, Peter

In copyright

0
/
0

Language
Englisch

Subject
Zipfsches Gesetz
Linguistik

Event
Geistige Schöpfung
(who)
Meyer, Peter
Event
Veröffentlichung
(who)
Lüdenscheid : RAM
(when)
2015-07-14

URN
urn:nbn:de:bsz:mh39-38679
Last update
06.03.2025, 9:00 AM CET

Data provider

This object is provided by:
Leibniz-Institut für Deutsche Sprache - Bibliothek. If you have any questions about the object, please contact the data provider.

Object type

  • Artikel

Associated

  • Meyer, Peter
  • Lüdenscheid : RAM

Time of origin

  • 2015-07-14

Other Objects (12)