The Menzerath-Altmann Law

The Menzerath-Altmann Law can be traced back to 1928, when it was observed that long German words tend to consist of short syllables, and vice versa. The law was later generalized to be applicable to all languages. In essence, the Menzerath-Altmann Law constitutes a mathematical model for the relation between sizes of linguistic constituents and constructs. The model measures syllables and words and then places them in the so-called language unit hierarchy. The Menzerath-Altmann Law is almost ubiquitous – both with respect to languages and language units – and can be expressed by a simple mathematical formula. Relatively new linguistic units, such as linguistic motifs, sentence aggregates or syntactic structures from dependency grammar, also follow the law. The book offers the first interpretation of the model parameters. It contributes to the development of theoretical linguistics and to mathematical modelling of language properties.