Xinying Chen


2025

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Genre Variation in Dependency Types: A Two-Level Genre Analysis Using the Czech National Corpus
Xinying Chen | Miroslav Kubát
Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Dependency Linguistics (Depling, SyntaxFest 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.

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Proceedings of the Third Workshop on Quantitative Syntax (QUASY, SyntaxFest 2025)
Xinying Chen | Yaqin Wang
Proceedings of the Third Workshop on Quantitative Syntax (QUASY, SyntaxFest 2025)

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Syntactic Complexity in L2 Reading: A Comparison of Adapted and Original Czech Texts
Žaneta Stiborská | Michaela Nogolová | Xinying Chen | Miroslav Kubát
Proceedings of the Third Workshop on Quantitative Syntax (QUASY, SyntaxFest 2025)

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

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Proceedings of the Second Workshop on Quantitative Syntax (Quasy, SyntaxFest 2021)
Radek Čech | Xinying Chen
Proceedings of the Second Workshop on Quantitative Syntax (Quasy, SyntaxFest 2021)

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Attributivity and Subjectivity in Contemporary Written Czech
Miroslav Kubát | Radek Čech | Xinying Chen
Proceedings of the Second Workshop on Quantitative Syntax (Quasy, SyntaxFest 2021)

2019

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Proceedings of the First Workshop on Quantitative Syntax (Quasy, SyntaxFest 2019)
Xinying Chen | Ramon Ferrer-i-Cancho
Proceedings of the First Workshop on Quantitative Syntax (Quasy, SyntaxFest 2019)

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The relation between dependency distance and frequency
Xinying Chen | Kim Gerdes
Proceedings of the First Workshop on Quantitative Syntax (Quasy, SyntaxFest 2019)

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Rediscovering Greenberg’s Word Order Universals in UD
Kim Gerdes | Sylvain Kahane | Xinying Chen
Proceedings of the Third Workshop on Universal Dependencies (UDW, SyntaxFest 2019)

2017

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Classifying Languages by Dependency Structure. Typologies of Delexicalized Universal Dependency Treebanks
Xinying Chen | Kim Gerdes
Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Dependency Linguistics (Depling 2017)

2016

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Developing Universal Dependencies for Mandarin Chinese
Herman Leung | Rafaël Poiret | Tak-sum Wong | Xinying Chen | Kim Gerdes | John Lee
Proceedings of the 12th Workshop on Asian Language Resources (ALR12)

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

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Classifying Syntactic Categories in the Chinese Dependency Network
Xinying Chen | Haitao Liu | Kim Gerdes
Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Dependency Linguistics (Depling 2015)

2013

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Dependency Network Syntax: From Dependency Treebanks to a Classification of Chinese Function Words
Xinying Chen
Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Dependency Linguistics (DepLing 2013)