Published December 2009 | Version v1
Journal article

The meta book and size-dependent properties of written language

  • 1. Department of Physics, Umeaa University, 901 87 Umeaa (Sweden)

Description

Evidence is presented for a systematic text-length dependence of the power-law index γ of a single book. The estimated γ values are consistent with a monotonic decrease from 2 to 1 with increasing text length. A direct connection to an extended Heap's law is explored. The infinite book limit is, as a consequence, proposed to be given by γ=1 instead of the value γ=2 expected if Zipf's law is universally applicable. In addition, we explore the idea that the systematic text-length dependence can be described by a meta book concept, which is an abstract representation reflecting the word-frequency structure of a text. According to this concept the word-frequency distribution of a text, with a certain length written by a single author, has the same characteristics as a text of the same length extracted from an imaginary complete infinite corpus written by the same author.

Availability note (English)

Available from http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1367-2630/11/12/123015

Additional details

Publishing Information

Journal Title
New Journal of Physics
Journal Volume
11
Journal Issue
12
Journal Page Range
[15 p.]
ISSN
1367-2630

INIS

Country of Publication
United Kingdom
Country of Input or Organization
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
INIS RN
41047720
Subject category
S99: GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS;
Descriptors DEI
AUGMENTATION; DISTRIBUTION; INDEXES; LENGTH
Descriptors DEC
DIMENSIONS; DOCUMENT TYPES