Ct. Meadow et al., AN ANALYSIS OF ZIPF-MANDELBROT LANGUAGE MEASURES AND THEIR APPLICATION TO ARTIFICIAL LANGUAGES, Journal of information science, 19(4), 1993, pp. 247-257
Citations number
18
Categorie Soggetti
Information Science & Library Science","Information Science & Library Science
Studies of word frequency distributions have been used in linguistics
for some time and are frequently used in information science research
for such purposes as predicting numbers of key words or computing the
significance of a word by its frequency of occurrence. In this paper w
e provide a historical review of some of the developments in a particu
lar aspect of word frequency analysis known as Zipfs Law but in fact f
irst explicitly formulated by E.U. Condon, and later modified by B. Ma
ndelbrot. We present an exploratory analysis of the use of Mandelbrot'
s parameters in discriminating among languages and language usage. Som
e suggestions are made for using these parameters to characterize arti
ficial (command) languages or the manner of use of these languages by
different groups, for the purpose of enabling a computer interface to
respond to users in a manner suited to their backgrounds or skills.