Menzerath's law
Encyclopedia
Menzerath's law, or Menzerath–Altmann law (named after Paul Menzerath and Gabriel Altmann), is a linguistic
law according to which the increase of a linguistic construct results in a decrease of its constituents, and vice versa. According to Altmann (1980), it can be mathematically stated as:
where:
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
law according to which the increase of a linguistic construct results in a decrease of its constituents, and vice versa. According to Altmann (1980), it can be mathematically stated as:
where:
-
is the constituent size (e.g. syllable length) -
size of the linguistic construct that is being inspected (e.g. number of syllables per word) -
, 
, 
are the parameters