Xinying Chen


2025

This paper examines how dependency type distributions vary across genres in the Czech National Corpus (SYN2020). Using a two-level genre classification, broad categories and fine-grained subgenres, we identify genre-sensitive syntactic patterns through relative frequency analysis. The results show that some dependency types (e.g. Atr ‘attribute’) vary consistently across genres, while others (e.g. ExD ‘part of discourse ellipsis’) show sensitivity only at the subgenre level. Our dependency-based approach extends common multidimensional analyses based on lexical-grammatical co-occurrences, directly capturing syntactic evidence and improving interpretability. Our findings also highlight the importance of fine-grained genre distinctions in revealing syntactic variation.
This corpus-based study explores the syntactic complexity of adapted Czech texts designed for learners of Czech as a second language (L2). It investigates how syntactic complexity varies according to learner proficiency levels (A2, B1, B2) as defined by the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) and how these adapted texts differ from their original versions. Quantitative analyses using metrics such as average sentence length (ASL), average clause length (ACL), mean dependency distance (MDD), and mean hierarchical distance (MHD) demonstrate clear systematic simplifications in adapted texts at lower proficiency levels. At A2 and B1 levels, adapted texts were found to be significantly less syntactically complex compared to their original counterparts. However, these differences diminished notably at the B2 proficiency level, indicating a gradual alignment of adapted texts with native-level syntactic complexity as learner proficiency increased. These results underscore the importance of careful syntactic calibration in creating educational materials for language learners, highlighting implications for curriculum design, instructional methodologies, and materials development. The findings offer valuable insights for language educators and textbook authors aiming to optimize reading materials to support language acquisition effectively

2021

2019

2017

2016

This article proposes a Universal Dependency Annotation Scheme for Mandarin Chinese, including POS tags and dependency analysis. We identify cases of idiosyncrasy of Mandarin Chinese that are difficult to fit into the current schema which has mainly been based on the descriptions of various Indo-European languages. We discuss differences between our scheme and those of the Stanford Chinese Dependencies and the Chinese Dependency Treebank.

2015

2013