Evidence map›Paper›PMID 41294971›Full record

ArticleEntropy (Basel, Switzerland)2025

Interactions Among Morphology, Word Order, and Syntactic Directionality: Evidence from 55 Languages.

Wenchao Li, Haitao Liu

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Entropy (Basel, Switzerland), 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
0citing papers in PubMed
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1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

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Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

0 citing papers in PubMed.

No citing paper in PubMed yet.

4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

2 authors.

Wenchao LiSchool of International Studies, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China.
Haitao LiuCollege of Foreign Languages and Literature, Fudan University, Shanghai 200437, China.

Funding

National Office for Philosophy and Social Sciences, China 22BYY186
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

This study investigates interactions among morphology, word order, and syntactic directionality across 55 languages from 11 families. We quantify morphological richness (moving-average mean size of paradigm), word order flexibility (entropy), and syntactic directionality (dependency direction), linking linguistic structure to information-theoretic principles. Analyses show that morphological richness is only weakly related to word order entropy and does not provide a robust predictor after statistical correction. Rich morphology facilitates the predictability of syntactic functions. Languages with richer morphology consistently favor head-final structures, whereas minimally inflected languages lean toward head-initial patterns, indicating that syntactic directionality is more closely associated with morphological complexity than with surface word order. Overall, the findings indicate that languages maintain a balance between redundancy and flexibility in optimizing information transmission, providing quantitative evidence for efficiency-driven trade-offs in human language.

Indexed as

cross-linguistic variationmorphologysyntactic directionalitytypologyword order

Identifiers

PMID41294971
PMCPMC12651683

What OpenQuestion holds

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LicenceCC BY
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Registered trials

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.