Relationship Between Part-of-Speech-Based Stylistic Indicators and Subjective Impressions

Psychological Study of MVR and Part-of-Speech Composition

Abstract

The Modifier-Verb Ratio (MVR) is a widely used index for assessing stylistic features of Japanese texts in terms of part-of-speech composition. It is unclear how such elements are related to impressions resulting from reading a text. A questionnaire survey examined the relationship between MVR/part-of-speech rates and subjective impressions. Multilevel analysis indicated that noun and verb rates negatively affected imaginability, which was not the case for the modifier rate. We found an interaction between different types of part-of-speech by replacing the part-of-speech rates with the mean part-of-speech rates of sentences, which suggested that the more adjectives authors use, the easier it is for readers to imagine the scene depicted by texts, but only in that specific part-of-speech compositions. On the other hand, we did not find any promising explanatory variables for the impression of the speed of an unfolding story. We have discussed the relationship between part-of-speech composition and stylistic impressions, the significance of focusing on the part-of-speech composition of sentences, and reexamined the working definition based on this discussion.