November,12th,2015
Recently, Physics of Life Reviews, a famous international scientific journal of natural language, published a long review entitled as “Approaching Human Language with complex networks”. The first author is Cong Jin, a PhD student of our school, and Prof. Liu Haitao, his tutor, is the corresponding author. This review is not only the second long review from Chinese mainland since the journal was founded 11 years ago, but also the world’s first long review about complex networks of language that was published on a high-level academic journal.
Physics of Life Reviews（hereinafter called PLREV）is an international academic journal published by Elsevier Press, a famous international academic publishing house. In 4 issues each year, the journal focuses on the long reviews about biophysics, complex phenomena in bio system and artificial life. Now its impact factor of SCI is 9.478, the third in biology journals and the fourth in biophysics journals. PLREV adopts the system of inviting scholars who have done some research in a certain fields to write the review for the journal as a chief editor. It publishes only a dozen long reviews each year.
Based on the research that the team had done and the actual situation of complex networks of international languages, the long review made the conclusion and discussion on the research from the following three aspects: exploration of multilevel characteristics of human language from the perspective of complex networks; research of language type with the indicator of complex networks; research of the relationship between the macroscopical complexity and the microscopical features of human language. Through analysis and discussion, the review argued that complex networks, if properly used, could be a modeling method and a measurement method to explore some basic questions of human language and contribute to our understanding of structure and evolution model of human language. The review pointed out some limitations of the research as well. However, anyway, the use of complex networks is a kind of potential linguistic research method.
The team led by Prof. Liu was invited to write the review by PLREV because they had made many international leading achievements in the field over the years. It is owe to the interdisciplinary method that SIS uses in language research and it shows the leading role around the world that SIS plays in the field. The scholars who write comments for the review include internationally renowned linguist Richard Hudson, famous researcher of complex networks of language Dr. Ramon Ferrer-i-Cancho, celebrated quantitative linguist Prof. ReinhardKöhler and other scholars in the related field, which reveals the broad prospect and potential of the research field.
In the last sentence of the comment written by Dr. Ramon Ferrer-i-Cancho, the Spanish scholar who first used complex networks to study human language in the world said that: Cong & Liu are defining the linguistics of the future based on a network approach to language that feeds, renews and unifies theoretical linguistics.
Let’s work together, fighting for the scientization of linguistic study and the internationalization of Chinese linguistic!
The website of the article:
(Translated by Lei Jialin)
