Cross-language diversity, head-direction and grammars: Comment on "Dependency distance: A new perspective on syntactic patterns in natural languages" by Haitao Liu et al

DDM at Work: Reply to comments on "Dependency distance: A new perspective on syntactic patterns in natural languages"

We provide responses to the commentaries in this volume to evaluate, clarify and extend some of the arguments in Dependency distance: A new perspective on syntactic patterns in natural languages. Evidences show that DDM (dependency distance minimization) is an important linguistic universal, biologically or cognitively motivated, in shaping the language system. As a general tendency, DDM works quite well in theoretical argumentations as well as practical applications. However, this does not mean that DDM is the only linguistic universal that works: it is highly possible that other factors, which might be biologically, physically, socially or culturally motivated, work as well to jointly mold languages.