Beyond the Zipf–Mandelbrot law in quantitative linguistics

Marcelo A. Montemurro

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 2001, vol. 300, issue 3, 567-578

Abstract: In this paper the Zipf–Mandelbrot law is revisited in the context of linguistics. Despite its widespread popularity the Zipf–Mandelbrot law can only describe the statistical behaviour of a rather restricted fraction of the total number of words contained in some given corpus. In particular, we focus our attention on the important deviations that become statistically relevant as larger corpora are considered and that ultimately could be understood as salient features of the underlying complex process of language generation. Finally, it is shown that all the different observed regimes can be accurately encompassed within a single mathematical framework recently introduced by C. Tsallis.

Keywords: Zipf–Mandelbrot law; Human language (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2001
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378437101003557
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only. Journal offers the option of making the article available online on Science direct for a fee of $3,000

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:300:y:2001:i:3:p:567-578

DOI: 10.1016/S0378-4371(01)00355-7

Access Statistics for this article

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications is currently edited by K. A. Dawson, J. O. Indekeu, H.E. Stanley and C. Tsallis

More articles in Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().