Language networks: An insight into the language faculty?

Abstract

In this Master’s thesis we will approach language networks with a critical eye from a linguist’s perspective. Are language networks successful in representing key aspects of language? Are the cognitive inferences made from them sound? However, before diving into the particulars of language network research, the reader will need to bear with a somewhat hard to tread introduction (sections 2 and 3) where very basic foundations of network science are laid. In section 4 we will give a critical overview of research into semantic and syntactic networks (focusing on the latter), and in section 5 we will generate and analyze syntactic networks from English and Spanish corpora, and compare our results to those reviewed. We will end in section 6 with a reflection on modelling syntactic networks.