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Part of
Corpus-based Approaches to Register Variation
Edited by Elena Seoane and Douglas Biber
[Studies in Corpus Linguistics 103] 2021
► pp. 291–312

Chapter 11
Measuring informativity

The rise of compounds as informationally dense structures in 20th-century Scientific English

 | Saarland University
By applying data-driven methods based on information theory, this study adds to previous work on the development of the scientific register by measuring the informativity of alternative phrasal structures shown to be involved in change in language use in 20th-century Scientific English. The analysis based on data-driven periodization shows compounds to be distinctive grammatical structures from the 1920s onwards in Proceedings A of the Royal Society of London. Compounds not only increase in frequency, but also show higher informativity than their less dense prepositional counterparts. Results also show that the lower the informativity of particular items, the more alternative, more informationally dense options might be favoured (e.g., of-phrases vs. compounds) – striving for communicative efficiency thus being one force shaping the scientific register.
Keywords: diachronic change in scientific English, compounds, information density, informationally dense structures, detection of linguistic change, Royal Society Corpus, standardization, specialization
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Methods
    • 2.1Data
    • 2.2Data-driven periodization with Kullback-Leibler divergence
    • 2.3Determining informativity: Surprisal
  • 3.Tracing change in grammatical use in 20th-century Scientific English
    • 3.1The temporal dynamics of grammatical use in 20th-century Scientific English
    • 3.2Kinds of change in grammatical use: Inspecting distinctive patterns
    • 3.3Tracing changes towards the use of informationally dense structures
  • 4.Tracing the development of informationally dense structures
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 8 December 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.103.11deg
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