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Explain the law: When the evidence is not enough Cover

Explain the law: When the evidence is not enough

Open Access
|Jan 2021

Abstract

The article responds to the current variability of research into linguistic laws and the explanation of these laws. We show basic features to approach linguistic laws in the field of quantitative linguistics and research on linguistic laws outside the field of language and text. Language laws are usually explained in terms of the language system—especially as economizing—or of the information structure of the text (Piantadosi 2014). One of the hallmarks of the transmission of linguistic laws outside the realm of language and text is that they provide other kinds of explanations (Torre et al. 2019). We want to show that the problem of linguistics in the explanation of linguistic laws lies primarily in its inability to clarify the internal structure of language material, and the influence of the theory or method used for sample processing on the result of law analysis—which was formulated by Peter Grzybek (2006). We would like to show that this is the reason why linguistics avoids explanations of linguistic laws.

Language: English
Submitted on: Jul 1, 2020
Accepted on: Sep 1, 2020
Published on: Jan 21, 2021
Published by: Palacký University Olomouc
In partnership with: Paradigm Publishing Services
Publication frequency: 3 issues per year

© 2021 Martina Benešová, Dan Faltýnek, Lukáš Hadwiger Zámečník, published by Palacký University Olomouc
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

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