German Linguistics Conference, Siegen 2007

1. Do some genres become more ‘complex’ than others? Javier Pérez-Guerra (jperez@uvigo.es) Ana E. Martínez-Insua (minsua@uvigo.es) L anguage V ariation and T extual C ategorisation Research Unit University of Vigo DGFS ( Syntactic Variation and Emerging Genres ), Siegen, Feb 2007

4. The corpus Table 1: The corpus (word totals for the subjects and the objects) 108,086 65,231 35,929 23,441 34,013 22,261 38,144 19,529 Total subjects (100% of corpus) Total objects (60.35% of corpus) 30,731 34,500 34,500 11,747 11,694 11,694 11,461 10,800 10,800 7,523 12,006 12,006 news: objects letters: subjects letters: objects 73,586 24,235 23,213 26,138 news: subjects Total 1950-1990 1850-1899 1750-1799 text type period

5. The corpus Table 2: Pronominal and non-pronominal subjects (percentages per text type and period) 7,381 1,246 1,360 1,066 1,239 1,338 1,132 Total 534 31.87% 1,142 68.13% 468 31.27% 1,029 68.73% 561 39.24% 869 60.76% news 712 76.56% 218 23.44% 598 74% 210 26% 777 74.72% 263 25.28% letters pron non-pron pron non-pron pron non-pron Total 1950-1990 1850-1899 1750-1799 text type period

6. The corpus Table 3: Pronominal and non-pronominal objects (percentages per text type and period) 3,908 197 1,189 259 989 340 934 Total 34 5.18% 623 94.82% 58 10.06% 519 89.94% 83 23.12% 276 76.88% news 163 22.36% 566 77.64% 201 29.96% 470 70.04% 257 29.09% 658 71.91% letters pron non-pron pron non-pron pron non-pron Total 1950-1990 1850-1899 1750-1799 text type period

22. Analysis of the data Table 4: Metrics for the subjects 0.69 1.4 0.809 2.93 2.31 1.30 2.06 3.51 1950-1990 0.67 1.36 0.79 3.12 2.29 1.38 2.19 3.76 1850-1899 0.71 1.27 0.81 2.67 2.03 1.36 1.96 3.22 1750-1799 news 0.91 1.06 0.93 1.37 1.32 1.08 1.2 1.56 1950-1990 0.9 1.09 0.91 1.36 1.36 1.08 1.22 1.6 1850-1899 0.9 1.08 0.91 1.46 1.409 1.1 1.25 1.71 1750-1799 letters [8] [7] [6] [5] [4] [3] [2] [1] etric lack of efficiency depth density size

23. Analysis of the data Table 5: Metrics for the objects 0.56 1.71 0.81 8.11 7.19 1.36 2.43 8.99 1950-1990 0.6 1.47 0.82 8.97 7.65 1.4 2.27 9.82 1850-1899 0.69 1.33 0.79 5.53 4.66 1.33 2.03 6.27 1750-1799 news 0.75 1.29 0.8 4.59 4.52 1.21 1.67 5.34 1950-1990 0.79 1.26 0.82 4.32 4.12 1.19 1.64 4.98 1850-1899 0.73 1.34 0.82 4.59 4.26 1.22 1.78 5.28 1750-1799 letters [8] [7] [6] [5] [4] [3] [2] [1] etric lack of efficiency depth density size

34. Do some genres become more ‘complex’ than others? Javier Pérez-Guerra (jperez@uvigo.es) Ana E. Martínez-Insua (minsua@uvigo.es) L anguage V ariation and T extual C haracterisation Research Unit University of Vigo DGFS, Siegen, Feb 2007