ZIPF'S LAW AND RANDOM TEXTS

RAMON FERRER i Cancho () and Ricard V. Solé ()
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RAMON FERRER i Cancho: Complex Systems Research Group, FEN, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Campus Nord B4, 08034 Barcelona, Spain
Ricard V. Solé: Complex Systems Research Group, FEN, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Campus Nord B4, 08034 Barcelona, Spain;

Advances in Complex Systems (ACS), 2002, vol. 05, issue 01, 1-6

Abstract: Random-text models have been proposed as an explanation for the power law relationship between word frequency and rank, the so-called Zipf's law. They are generally regarded as null hypotheses rather than models in the strict sense. In this context, recent theories of language emergence and evolution assume this law asa prioriinformation with no need of explanation. Here, random texts and real texts are compared through (a) the so-called lexical spectrum and (b) the distribution of words having the same length. It is shown that real texts fill the lexical spectrum much more efficiently and regardless of the word length, suggesting that the meaningfulness of Zipf's law is high.

Keywords: Human language; scaling; Zipf's law; monkey languages; random texts (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2002
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DOI: 10.1142/S0219525902000468

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