Vitevitch Michael S
Spoken Language Laboratory, Department of Psychology, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 66045, USA.
J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2008 Apr;51(2):408-22. doi: 10.1044/1092-4388(2008/030).
Graph theory and the new science of networks provide a mathematically rigorous approach to examine the development and organization of complex systems. These tools were applied to the mental lexicon to examine the organization of words in the lexicon and to explore how that structure might influence the acquisition and retrieval of phonological word-forms.
Pajek, a program for large network analysis and visualization (V. Batagelj & A. Mvrar, 1998), was used to examine several characteristics of a network derived from a computerized database of the adult lexicon. Nodes in the network represented words, and a link connected two nodes if the words were phonological neighbors.
The average path length and clustering coefficient suggest that the phonological network exhibits small-world characteristics. The degree distribution was fit better by an exponential rather than a power-law function. Finally, the network exhibited assortative mixing by degree. Some of these structural characteristics were also found in graphs that were formed by 2 simple stochastic processes suggesting that similar processes might influence the development of the lexicon.
The graph theoretic perspective may provide novel insights about the mental lexicon and lead to future studies that help us better understand language development and processing.
图论和新的网络科学提供了一种数学上严谨的方法来研究复杂系统的发展和组织。这些工具被应用于心理词典，以研究词典中单词的组织方式，并探索这种结构如何影响语音词形的习得和检索。
使用Pajek（一个用于大型网络分析和可视化的程序，V. Batagelj和A. Mvrar，1998年）来研究从成人词汇计算机数据库派生的网络的几个特征。网络中的节点代表单词，如果两个单词是语音邻接词，则用一条链接将它们连接起来。
平均路径长度和聚类系数表明语音网络具有小世界特征。度分布用指数函数比用幂律函数拟合得更好。最后，网络按度表现出同类混合。在由两个简单随机过程形成的图中也发现了其中一些结构特征，这表明类似的过程可能影响词典的发展。
图论视角可能为心理词典提供新的见解，并引发未来的研究，帮助我们更好地理解语言发展和处理。
