Fitting Chinese syllable-to-character mapping spectrum by the beta rank function

Wentian Li

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 2012, vol. 391, issue 4, 1515-1518

Abstract: We define the syllable-to-character mapping spectrum in Chinese as the normalized number of characters per syllable ranked from high to low. This spectrum provides a statistical characterization of the relationship between spoken and written Chinese. We have shown that two functions, the logarithmic function and the beta rank function, fit the syllable-to-character mapping spectrum well. The beta rank function is even better than the logarithmic function judged by two measures of data-fitting performance: the sum of square errors, and Akaike information criterion. We comment on why the beta rank function is a good fitting function for many range-limited ranking data, whereas for range-open data it may be out-performed by other functions, such as a power-law function in the case of Zipf’s law.

Keywords: Zipf’s law; Beta rank function; Akaike information criterion; Chinese language (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:391:y:2012:i:4:p:1515-1518

DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2011.08.024

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