TY  - JOUR
U1  - Zeitschriftenartikel, wissenschaftlich - begutachtet (reviewed)
A1  - Meyer, Peter
T1  - Laws and Theories in Quantitative Linguistics
JF  - Glottometrics
N2  - According to a widespread conception, quantitative linguistics will eventually be able to explain empirical quantitative findings (such as Zipf’s Law) by deriving them from highly general stochastic linguistic ‘laws’ that are assumed to be part of a general theory of human language (cf. Best (1999) for a summary of possible theoretical positions). Due to their formal proximity to methods used in the so-called exact sciences, theoretical explanations of this kind are assumed to be superior to the supposedly descriptive-only approaches of linguistic structuralism and its successors. In this paper I shall try to argue that on close inspection such claims turn out to be highly problematic, both on linguistic and on science-theoretical grounds.
KW  - Zipf
KW  - Language laws
KW  - Ceteris paribus laws
KW  - Emergence
KW  - Complexity theory
KW  - Explanation
KW  - Science theory
KW  - Word length
KW  - Menzerath
KW  - Zipfsches Gesetz
Y1  - 2002
U6  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:bsz:mh39-38679
UN  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:bsz:mh39-38679
SN  - 1617-8351
SS  - 1617-8351
VL  - 2002
IS  - 5
SP  - 62
EP  - 80
PB  - RAM
CY  - Lüdenscheid
ER  -