What Does the Menzerath-Altmann Law Really Say?

• Authors: MACUTEK Jan; NOGOLOVA Michaela; ROVENCHAK Andrij; ČECH Radek
• Year of publication: 2025
• Type: Article in Periodical
• Magazine / Source: JOURNAL OF QUANTITATIVE LINGUISTICS
• MU Faculty or unit: Faculty of Arts
• web: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09296174.2025.2545052?scroll=top&needAccess=true#abstract
• Doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/09296174.2025.2545052
• Keywords: The Menzerath-Altmann law; length; syllable

Attached files

• 2025_Macutek_et_al_What_Does_MALSay_.pdf

• Description: The Menzerath-Altmann law predicts an inverse relationship between the lengths of a linguistic unit and of its parts. As a relationship between word length and the mean syllable length, it has been shown to be valid in many languages. However, we present several languages in which the mean syllable length does not decrease with increasing word length. These languages have simple syllables (mostly only of CV and V structure). This behaviour is explained as a consequence of the horror aequi principle, according to which language avoids similar units close to each other. The implications for the general validity of the Menzerath-Altmann law are discussed.

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