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This study investigates whether sentence lengths and sub\u2010sentence lengths\u2014defined as the number of words between sentence\u2010ending punctuation marks and between adjacent punctuation marks\u2014follow a unified probabilistic distribution across languages, whether this reflects linguistic genealogy, and whether the distribution is affected by genre. Given the links between sentence length, cognitive constraints, and stylistic decisions, we predicted that sentence and sub\u2010sentence lengths would follow a unified probabilistic distribution across languages, modulated by linguistic genealogy and genre. Analyzing news texts in 10 languages, we found that sentence and sub\u2010sentence length distributions both conform to a probabilistic model, the Extended Positive Negative Binomial distribution, which was previously shown to capture sentence length distributions in certain languages. To assess whether these differences align with linguistic typology, we performed cluster analysis based on mean length and distribution parameters, with results mirroring known linguistic genealogical relationships. To examine the genre effects, we analyzed sentence and sub\u2010sentence length distributions across three written genres in English and Chinese. Generalized linear models revealed systematic influences of both genre and language, but with varying results on different linguistic levels: genre accounted for more variance in sentence\u2010level metrics, whereas language exerted stronger effects at the sub\u2010sentence level. Sentence and sub\u2010sentence length distributions reflect a universal probabilistic pattern in punctuation\u2010based sentence segmentation, influenced by cognitive constraints and genre\u2010driven adaptability across languages.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1111\/cogs.70115","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2025,9,23]],"date-time":"2025-09-23T07:48:36Z","timestamp":1758613716000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1002\/crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":3,"title":["Language Universals in Sentence Length: Comparing Sentence Length Distributions of 10 Languages"],"prefix":"10.1111","volume":"49","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-6079-5448","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Yikai","family":"Zhou","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"School of International Studies Zhejiang University"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-3019-3918","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Jingyang","family":"Jiang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of International Studies Zhejiang University"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-1724-4418","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Haitao","family":"Liu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"College of Foreign Languages and Literature Fudan University"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"311","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2025,9,23]]},"reference":[{"key":"e_1_2_10_2_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1515\/glot\u20102014\u20100008"},{"key":"e_1_2_10_3_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1111\/cogs.12987"},{"key":"e_1_2_10_4_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1017\/CBO9780511621024"},{"issue":"2","key":"e_1_2_10_5_1","first-page":"219","article-title":"Using register\u2010diversified corpora for general language studies","volume":"19","author":"Biber D.","year":"1993","journal-title":"Computational Linguistics"},{"key":"e_1_2_10_6_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1515\/cllt\u20102012\u20100002"},{"key":"e_1_2_10_7_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1017\/9781108686136"},{"key":"e_1_2_10_8_1","first-page":"1709","article-title":"Fast and easy: Approximating uniform information density in language production","volume":"39","author":"Calvillo J.","year":"2017","journal-title":"Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society"},{"key":"e_1_2_10_9_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1162\/tacl_a_00589"},{"key":"e_1_2_10_10_1","volume-title":"A grammar of spoken Chinese","author":"Chao Y.","year":"1965"},{"key":"e_1_2_10_11_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1515\/cllt\u20102022\u20100032"},{"key":"e_1_2_10_12_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1080\/09296170500055301"},{"key":"e_1_2_10_13_1","volume-title":"Making a point: The Persnickety story of English punctuation","author":"Crystal D.","year":"2015"},{"key":"e_1_2_10_14_1","volume-title":"Word: A cross\u2010linguistic typology","author":"Dixcon R. 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