I. There is a tendency in academic disciplines to draw their own edges narrower and tighten the scope of their research topics as they mature over the years. Quantitative Linguistics does not appear to respect this tendency but has obviously taken up more and more problems from different disciplines since its beginnings in the early 1930s, through its first flourishing period during the l950s, to the seminal work in the Eastern European countries as documented by the series Kvantitativnaja lingvistika i avtomaticeskij analiz tekstov (Tartu, since 1976) and the continuous international research published in the volumes of our book series Quantitative Linguistics (since 1978). Adopting more and more directions of linguistic inquiry and adapting to new and seemingly divergent lines of research, Quantitative Linguistics has matured as a discipline by being modified in modifying its approaches that resulted in suprisingly new insights and sometimes unexpected findings. Very much like Computational Linguistics whose new approach to deal with linguistic phenomena is characterized by the theoretical postulate and practical application of algorithmic modelling as derived within the theory of formal languages, so does Quantitative Linguistics not differ in principle from the aims and objectives of other ventures in general linguistics: it is concerned with the observation, description, simulation and explanation of phenomena, structures, functions, and processes that the use of language signs and texts in communicative settings produce. QL approaches, however, employ other methods and models in achieving these goals than CL or linguistics general: in distinction to qualitative, structural, algorithmic or formal investigations which use algebra, set theory, formal logics, topology, etc. with some mathematical rigour in linguistics, quantitative linguistic research furthermore employs mathematical analysis, probability theory, stochastic processes, differential and difference equations, statistics, possibility theory, fuzzy logics, systems theory, etc. to model and understand sign based phenomena of language and communication.
As a consequence, Quantitative Linguistics deals with the quantitative characterization of languages and text features in an exact mathematical form which allows for their further treatment by formal and numerical operations. In the areas of description, theory construction, explanation and application, there are continuously opening up new perspectives which offer solutions to a wide range of theoretical and practical problems, both in linguistics proper and in language technology.
II. The advantages of quantative, numerically specifiable - as opposed to structural, symbolically represented - mathematical concepts become evident in all cases where the rigidity of crisp categories and determinate rules do not adequately describe the phenomena observed, i.e. where the variability and vagueness of natural languages cannot be neglected, where mere tendencies and preferences rather than stable relations and structures have to be accounted for, where the forms and principles of dynamic changes reveal more of a functional system in want of explanation than the well understood structural consistency of inadequate models.
Another reason to employ quantitative means in modelling linguistic concepts is to be found in the fact that quantitative expressions - other than qualitative ones - allow not only for a finer grid of resolution, e.g. continuous gradation of representational formats on all levels of semiotic description (phnonology, morphology, lexic, syntax, semantics, pragmatics), but also for the development of new and even richer conceptions, i.e. further functional modelling and testable processing of intermediate representations and/or abstract entities not directly observable. As indicated by the previous history of other sciences and their development, the introduction of quantative models tends to provide unprecedented views and perspectives; extended to the study of signs and languages, these models may well advance new understandings of the nature of linguistic entities, related dependencies and processes, and the interconnections and mechanisms involved in the functioning and the dynamics of communication.
From an epistemological point of view research in Quantitative Linguistics - like any scientific activity - seeks to explore the ground upon which explanations may be based in order to construct a theory as a consistently structured set of testable hypotheses. These will permanently stay under revision in the light of new findings which either confirm or question the predictions that can be deduced from the theory. It may intersubjectively be agreed upon thanks to its numerically specified terms and its formally defined and algorithmically derivable consequences that model the dynamics of cognitive scrutiny. Hence, considering natural languages and their use in communicative settings some essentially functional system of highest complexity, Quantitative Linguistics reaches beyond the modelling of such systems by deterministic rules in allowing these rules to be understood as special cases of more comprising stochastic regularities by which natural languages abide. One of the most promising strategies available to find such laws and to integrate them into a theoretical framework which deserves to be called `linguistic theory' has been conceived within Quantitative Linguistics lately under the notion of synergetics and self-organization which focusses on the dynamic aspects of system changes under prevailing stability conditions of communicative performance.
It is at this juncture that Quantitative Linguistics can be characterized as a scientific discipline being in search of universal and invariable laws which govern languages, their entities, structures, functions and processes.
III. Planned as the Proceedings of the First International Quantitative Linguistics Conference (QUALICO) which was held in conjunchon with the 13th Annual Meeting of the German Society for Linguistic Computing (GLDV) at the University of Trier, Germany, September 23rd-27th, 1991, this volume comprises the papers that were accepted by the Program Committee and presented in one of the eight topical sections: Quantification and Measurement; Models and Explantion; Process Dynamics and Semiotics; Textual Structures and Processing; Statistical Studies; Phonemics and Phonetics; Dialectometry; Reports, Projects, and Results. In addition to the submitted papers, there were five keynote lectures given by invited speakers, namely - in alphabeacal order - GABRIEL ALTMANN (Germany) on: Science and Linguistics, KENNETH W. CHURCH (USA) on: Using Statistics in Lexical Analysis, HANS GOEBL (Austria) on: Computational Dialectometry, JOHN S. NICOLIS (Greece) on: Chaotic Dynamics of Linguistic Processes: at the Syntactic, Semantic, and Pragmatic Levels, and MILDRED L.G. SHAW and BRIAN R. GAINES (Canada) on: A Methodology forAnalyzing Terminological and Conceptual Differences in Language Use across Communities. These lectures - apart from NICOLIS's [1] and CHURCH's [2] texts which were agreed to be published elsewhere - have also been incorporated and inserted under the respective thematic headings as appropriate for this volume.
For their considerable help in preparing the printable versions of the texts presented here, we thank Sheila Embleton as the competent linguist and native speaker of English who gracefully granted us her expertise, and Peter Schmidt as competent speaker of English and native linguist who also bore the organizational burden and managerial stress in good humor as an assistant to the editors: without their efficient collaboration the volume would not have gained its present form.
Finally, as organizers and hosts of the conference and as editors of this volume we take this opportunity to thank the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) for funding, and we extend our thanks to all institutions and organizations - among which the GLDV deserves to be mentioned individually - which gave us their support in preparing and holding the 1st QUALICO for more than 120 participants from 16 countries of Asia, North America, and Eastern and Western Europe.
| Trier, August 1992, | Burghard B. Rieger, Reinhard Köhler |