That's Optional: A Contemporary Exploration of "that" Omission in English Subordinate Clauses
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Abstract (arXiv)
The Uniform Information Density (UID) hypothesis posits that speakers optimize the communicative properties of their utterances by avoiding spikes in information, thereby maintaining a relatively uniform information profile over time. This paper investigates the impact of UID principles on syntactic reduction, specifically focusing on the optional omission of the connector "that" in English subordinate clauses. Building upon previous research, we extend our investigation to a larger corpus of written English, utilize contemporary large language models (LLMs) and extend the information-uniformity principles by the notion of entropy, to estimate the UID manifestations in the usecase of syntactic reduction choices.
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References · 7
- 2017Attention Is All You Needcited by 59,932
- 2022OPT: Open Pre-trained Transformer Language Modelscited by 3,464
- 2021Revisiting the Uniform Information Density Hypothesiscited by 63
- 2022On the Effect of Anticipation on Reading Timescited by 18
- 2023A Cross-Linguistic Pressure for Uniform Information Density in Word Ordercited by 16
- 2021Understanding who uses Reddit: Profiling individuals with a self-reported bipolar disorder diagnosiscited by 8
- 2019CodeSwitch-Reddit: Exploration of Written Multilingual Discourse in Online Discussion Forumscited by 3
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