English Dictionary

Menzerath's law

固有名詞

(linguistics) A rule according to which the increase of a linguistic construct results in a decrease of its constituents, and vice versa: for example, the more clauses appear in a sentence, the shorter those clauses are.

日本語の意味

（言語学）ある言語構造の大きさが増すと、その構成要素の大きさや長さが減少するという法則。例えば、文章中の節が多くなると各節が短くなる傾向があることを示す。

In his lectures on quantitative linguistics, he frequently invoked Menzerath's law to illustrate why longer sentences tend to consist of shorter clauses.

彼は定量言語学の講義で、言語構成が大きくなるとその構成要素が短くなるという法則を頻繁に引用して、なぜ長い文が短い節で構成される傾向があるのかを説明した。

意味（1）

(linguistics) A rule according to which the increase of a linguistic construct results in a decrease of its constituents, and vice versa: for example, the more clauses appear in a sentence, the shorter those clauses are.