英语词汇长度与词汇意义关系的计量语言学研究  

On the Relation between English Word Length and Word Meaning:A Quantitative Linguistic Study

作　　者：夏慧言[1] 孙凤兰[2] 

机构地区：[1]天津科技大学外国语学院,天津300222 [2]北京外国语大学外语研究中心,北京100089

出　　处：《外语与外语教学》2011年第3期44-49,共6页Foreign Languages and Their Teaching

摘　　要：本研究以《英国国家语料库》为基础，采用计量语言学的方法，探讨了英语词长和词汇意义之间的关系，验证了相关理论假设和数学模型。研究结果证实了Altmann等提出的词汇义项数取决于词汇长度的假设和Wimmer＆Altmann提出的词汇同义词数取决于词汇长度的假设。研究结果同时表明，幂律函数模型Y=Ax^-b能够很好描述词汇义项数与词长之间的关系，但是复合函数模型Y=Ax^be^cx不能准确描述同义词数与词长的关系，就英语而言，三次曲线函数模型y=a＋bx＋cx^2＋bx^3能很好地拟合观测数据。Based on the British National Corpus, the present study investigates the relationship between word length and word meaning by verifying two theoretical hypotheses and mathematical models. The results corroborate the hypothesis that polysemy is a function of word length, proposed by Altmann et al. （ 1982）, as well as the hypothesis that synonymy is a function of word length,proposed by Wimmer ＆ Altmann （2001）. Furthermore,the study shows that the power model y = Axb can perfectly describe the relationship between polysemy and word length,however, the compound model y = Axbecx has a poor goodness-of-fit for the relationship between synonymy and word length. As far as the English language is concerned, the cubic model y = a ＋ bx ＋ cx2 ＋ dx3 has a best fit.

关 键 词：词长 词汇多义性 词汇同义性 数学模型 

分 类 号：H0[语言文字—语言学]