Cross-linguistic conditions on word length

Søren Wichmann; Eric W Holman

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0281041

Cross-linguistic conditions on word length

PLoS One. 2023 Jan 27;18(1):e0281041. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0281041. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Søren Wichmann¹, Eric W Holman²

Affiliations

¹ Cluster of Excellence ROOTS, Kiel University, Kiel, Germany.
² Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, United States of America.

Abstract

Based on a dataset representing close to ¾ of the world's languages we investigate differences among languages and between items on the Swadesh list with regard to mean word length from a linguistic typological point of view. Mapping the world-wide distribution of word length shows convergence at a continent-wide level, a Pacific Rim signature, and a tendency for large word length averages to be a recessive trait. The amount of data, which is unparalleled in previous, related studies, allows us to provide more solid estimates and accounts for the interrelationships between word length, phoneme segment inventory size, and population size than was previously possible. Word length differences between items exhibit robust, universal tendencies, which are discussed in relation to other quantities, including stability, synonymy, and attestation.

Copyright: © 2023 Wichmann, Holman. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Language*
Linguistics*

Grants and funding

SW’s research was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under Germany´s Excellence Strategy – EXC 2150 – 390870439 and grant no. G2021125001L of the International Collaboration Program of Nankai University, China. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.