The Menzerath-Altmann Law in Czech Poems by K. J. Erben

The aim of the paper is to test the validity of the Menzerath-Altmann law for Czech poems from K. J. Erben’s ballad collection Kytice z pověstí národních (A Bouquet of Folk Legends). We focus particularly on the relationship between word length and syllable length. The Menzerath-Altmann law predicts that the mean syllable length will be longer in shorter words. The parameters of the mathematical model of this law for poems are compared with those for prose texts.