Swedish and Danish, spoken and written language: A statistical comparison

The aim of much linguistic research is to determine the grammar and the lexicon of a certain language L. The spoken variant of L – in so far as it is considered at all – is generally taken to be just another projection of the same grammar and lexicon. We suspect that this assumption may be wrong. Our suspicion derives from our contrastive analyses of four corpora, two Swedish and two Danish (covering spoken as well as written language), suggesting that – in the dimensions of frequency distribution, word type selection, and distribution over parts of speech – the mode of communication (spoken versus written) is much more significant as a determining factor than even the choice of language (Swedish versus Danish).