Alexander Koplenig
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View article: Statistical errors undermine claims about the evolution of polysynthetic languages - a comment on Bromham, Yaxley, Wilson, and Hua (2025)
Statistical errors undermine claims about the evolution of polysynthetic languages - a comment on Bromham, Yaxley, Wilson, and Hua (2025) Open
We identify major flaws in the statistical analysis of Bromham et al. (2025), whose claims about polysynthesis and phylogenetic isolation rely on incorrect implementations of Bayesian model averaging and spatial filtering. Reanalysis using…
View article: Statistical errors undermine claims about the evolution of polysynthetic languages - a comment on Bromham, Yaxley, Wilson, and Hua (2025)
Statistical errors undermine claims about the evolution of polysynthetic languages - a comment on Bromham, Yaxley, Wilson, and Hua (2025) Open
We identify major flaws in the statistical analysis of Bromham et al. (2025), whose claims about polysynthesis and phylogenetic isolation rely on incorrect implementations of Bayesian model averaging and spatial filtering. Reanalysis using…
View article: Does corpus size influence normalised frequencies?
Does corpus size influence normalised frequencies? Open
Several frequency-based measures are influenced by corpus size (e.g. lexical diversity or text similarity measures). It is largely unquestioned, however, that normalised frequencies correct for the influence of corpus size – but it has not…
View article: Analysis of language diversity on islands requires adequate statistical modelling - a comment on Bromham, Yaxley and Cardillo (2024)
Analysis of language diversity on islands requires adequate statistical modelling - a comment on Bromham, Yaxley and Cardillo (2024) Open
In a recent study, Bromham, Yaxley and Cardillo (BYC) assembled an impressive database of 1,197 languages spoken across 13,100 islands to examine how predictions from island biogeography theory (IBT) apply to linguistic diversity and wheth…
View article: Human languages trade off complexity against efficiency
Human languages trade off complexity against efficiency Open
From a cross-linguistic perspective, language models are interesting because they can be used as idealised language learners that learn to produce and process language by being trained on a corpus of linguistic input. In this paper, we tra…
View article: Analysis of language diversity on islands requires adequate statistical modelling - a comment on Bromham, Yaxley and Cardillo (2024)
Analysis of language diversity on islands requires adequate statistical modelling - a comment on Bromham, Yaxley and Cardillo (2024) Open
In a recent study, Bromham, Yaxley and Cardillo (BYC) assembled an impressive database of 1,197 languages spoken across 13,100 islands to examine how predictions from island biogeography theory (IBT) apply to linguistic diversity and wheth…
View article: Analysis of language diversity on islands requires adequate statistical modelling - a comment on Bromham, Yaxley and Cardillo (2024)
Analysis of language diversity on islands requires adequate statistical modelling - a comment on Bromham, Yaxley and Cardillo (2024) Open
In a recent study, Bromham, Yaxley and Cardillo (BYC) assembled an impressive database of 1,197 languages spoken across 13,100 islands to examine how predictions from island biogeography theory (IBT) apply to linguistic diversity and wheth…
View article: Still No Evidence for an Effect of the Proportion of Non-Native Speakers on Natural Language Complexity
Still No Evidence for an Effect of the Proportion of Non-Native Speakers on Natural Language Complexity Open
In a recent study, I demonstrated that large numbers of L2 (second language) speakers do not appear to influence the morphological or information-theoretic complexity of natural languages. This paper has three primary aims: First, I addres…
View article: Still No Evidence for an Effect of the Proportion of Non-Native Speakers on Natural Language Complexity
Still No Evidence for an Effect of the Proportion of Non-Native Speakers on Natural Language Complexity Open
In a recent study published in this journal (https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.181274), I demonstrated that large numbers of L2 (second language) speakers do not appear to affect the morphological or information-theoretic complexity of a langua…
View article: Leakage explains the apparent superiority of Bayesian random effect models – a preregistered comment on Claessens, Kyritsis and Atkinson (2023)
Leakage explains the apparent superiority of Bayesian random effect models – a preregistered comment on Claessens, Kyritsis and Atkinson (2023) Open
In a previous study, Claessens, Kyritsis, and Atkinson (CKA) demonstrated the importance of controlling for geographic proximity and cultural similarity in cross-national analyses. Based on a simulation study, CKA showed that methods commo…
View article: Human languages trade off complexity against efficiency
Human languages trade off complexity against efficiency Open
From a cross-linguistic perspective, language models are interesting because they can be used as idealised language learners that learn to produce and process language by being trained on a corpus of linguistic input. In this paper, we tra…
View article: Human languages trade off complexity against efficiency
Human languages trade off complexity against efficiency Open
From a cross-linguistic perspective, language models are interesting because they can be used as idealised language learners that learn to produce and process language by being trained on a corpus of linguistic input. In this paper, we tra…
View article: Does corpus size influence normalised frequencies?
Does corpus size influence normalised frequencies? Open
Several frequency-based corpus linguistic measures are strongly influenced by corpus size (e.g. measures of lexical diversity or text similarity metrics). It is largely unquestioned, however, that normalised frequencies are supposed to cor…
View article: Text length strongly matters when analysing word frequency distributions
Text length strongly matters when analysing word frequency distributions Open
In a previous study, Aceves and Evans (AE) present a large-scale quantitative information-theoretic analysis of parallel corpus data in approximately 1,000 languages to show that there are apparently strong associations between the way lan…
View article: Less than one percent of words would be affected by gender-inclusive language in German press texts
Less than one percent of words would be affected by gender-inclusive language in German press texts Open
Research on gender and language is tightly knitted to social debates on gender equality and non-discriminatory language use. Psycholinguistic scholars have made significant contributions in this field. However, corpus-based studies that in…
View article: Introducing DeReKoGram: A Novel Frequency Dataset with Lemma and Part-of-Speech Information for German
Introducing DeReKoGram: A Novel Frequency Dataset with Lemma and Part-of-Speech Information for German Open
We introduce DeReKoGram, a novel frequency dataset containing lemma and part-of-speech (POS) information for 1-, 2-, and 3-grams from the German Reference Corpus. The dataset contains information based on a corpus of 43.2 billion tokens an…
View article: Languages with more speakers tend to be harder to (machine-)learn
Languages with more speakers tend to be harder to (machine-)learn Open
Computational language models (LMs), most notably exemplified by the widespread success of OpenAI's ChatGPT chatbot, show impressive performance on a wide range of linguistic tasks, thus providing cognitive science and linguistics with a c…
View article: Languages with more speakers tend to be harder to (machine-)learn
Languages with more speakers tend to be harder to (machine-)learn Open
Computational language models (LMs), most notably exemplified by the widespread success of OpenAI's ChatGPT chatbot, show impressive performance on a wide range of linguistic tasks, thus providing cognitive science and linguistics with a c…
View article: A large quantitative analysis of written language challenges the idea that all languages are equally complex
A large quantitative analysis of written language challenges the idea that all languages are equally complex Open
One of the fundamental questions about human language is whether all languages are equally complex. Here, we approach this question from an information-theoretic perspective. We present a large scale quantitative cross-linguistic analysis …
View article: Introducing DeReKoGram: A novel frequency dataset with lemma and part- of-speech information for German
Introducing DeReKoGram: A novel frequency dataset with lemma and part- of-speech information for German Open
We introduce DeReKoGram, a novel frequency dataset containing lemma and part-of-speech (POS) information for 1-, 2-, and 3-grams from the German Reference Corpus. The dataset contains information based on a corpus of 43.2 billion tokens an…
View article: To drop or not to drop? Predicting the omission of the infinitival marker in a Swedish future construction
To drop or not to drop? Predicting the omission of the infinitival marker in a Swedish future construction Open
We investigate the optional omission of the infinitival marker in a Swedish future tense construction. During the last two decades the frequency of omission has been rapidly increasing, and this process has received considerable attention …
View article: Still no evidence for an effect of the proportion of non-native speakers on language complexity -- A response to Kauhanen, Einhaus & Walkden (2023)
Still no evidence for an effect of the proportion of non-native speakers on language complexity -- A response to Kauhanen, Einhaus & Walkden (2023) Open
In a recent paper published in the Journal of Language Evolution, Kauhanen, Einhaus & Walkden (https://doi.org/10.1093/jole/lzad005, KEW) challenge the results presented in one of my papers (Koplenig, Royal Society Open Science, 6, 181274 …
View article: Human languages trade off complexity against efficiency
Human languages trade off complexity against efficiency Open
One of the fundamental questions about human language is whether all languages are equally complex. Here, we approach this question from an information-theoretic perspective. To this end, we conduct a large scale quantitative cross-linguis…
View article: No evidence for an association between gender equality and pathogen prevalence -- a comment on Varnum and Grossmann 2017
No evidence for an association between gender equality and pathogen prevalence -- a comment on Varnum and Grossmann 2017 Open
In a previous study published in Nature Human Behaviour, Varnum and Grossmann claim that reductions in gender inequality are linked to reductions in pathogen prevalence in the United States between 1951 and 2013. Since the statistical meth…
View article: Both the validity of the cultural tightness index and the association with creativity and order are spurious -- a comment on Jackson et al
Both the validity of the cultural tightness index and the association with creativity and order are spurious -- a comment on Jackson et al Open
It was recently suggested in a study published in Nature Human Behaviour that the historical loosening of American culture was associated with a trade-off between higher creativity and lower order. To this end, Jackson et al. generate a li…