Menzerath's law

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:

$y=a \cdot x^{-b} \cdot e^{-c x}$

where:

• y is the constituent size (e.g. syllable length)
• x size of the linguistic construct that is being inspected (e.g. number of syllables per word)
• a, b, c are the parameters

References

• Gabriel Altmann (1980). "Prolegomena to Menzerath's law". Glottometrika 2: pp. 1–10. 
• Gabriel Altmann, Michael H. Schwibbe (1989): Das Menzerathsche Gesetz in informationsverarbeitenden Systemen. Hildesheim/Zürich/New York: Olms. ISBN 3-487-09144-5.
• Luděk Hřebíček (1995): Text Levels. Language Constructs, Constituents and the Menzerath-Altmann Law. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier. ISBN 3-88476-179-X.