Ioan-Iovitz Popescu

Word frequency studies

Word frequency plays a prominent role in many scientific and applicational fields. The book presents innovative methods in research and new results important for language and text characterization. Based on a general theory, surprising interrelations are shown between word frequency and other linguistic properties. Interrelations between previously known methods and new characteristics such as the h-point and other measures developed in the book are investigated. Furthermore, new statistical tests are introduced.

Hapax Legomena and Language Typology

Abstract Counting word forms one obtains more hapax legomena in highly synthetic languages than in highly analytic ones. We propose an index of analytism based exclusively on mechanical counting of word forms in text.

Zipf's Laws in Italian Texts

Abstract There are texts which do not conform to the classical Zipfs law, but even if it holds, some questions remain open. In order to test the validity of Zipfs law we analysed a corpus composed of the End of Year addresses delivered by ten presidents of the Italian Republic in the period 1949–2008. The results show that Zipfs law is an adequate model and that the corpus has a unique style, even if the texts were compiled by at least two persons. The analyses allow us to find a position for each president on the synthetism/analytism scale. Presidents Pertini and Scalfaro show the best well-defined individual characteristic features.

Some Geometric Properties of Slovak Poetry

Abstract The article is focused on the analysis of the frequency structure of texts. Specifically, a geometric characterization of the rank-frequency sequence, which is determined by relationships among the highest word frequency, a number of particular word forms in a text, and the so-called h-point, is analysed. We observe that the geometric characterization of the rank-frequency sequence correlates strongly with the other frequency-based text property called the golden section of text which seems to be a result of a universal mechanism controlling ones language usage. These findings can be viewed as a result of self-organization of text.

Descriptivity in Slovak Lyrics

Abstract The aim of the article is to introduce the measurement of “activity” and “descriptivity” of a text based on the proportions of adjectives and verbs. Functions based on interaction of forces, tests for significance of a property and for comparison of two texts are introduced. The methods are applied to the poetry of the Slovak poetess Eva Bachletová.

Structural conservatism and innovation in texts

In some previous works (Popescu, Ma utek, Altmann 2010; Popescu, ech, Altmann 2011) it has been stated that the lambda-indicator expressing an aspect of lexical structuring of texts – including vocabulary richness – independently of text size has further different aspects whose investigation must be performed stepwise. Needless to say, not all aspects are known – a quite normal situation in any scientific discipline – but one of them will be scrutinized separately in the present article. It has been stated that if one analyzes different works of one and the same author, the number of lambda-similarities among texts abide by the beta function. One can consider it a beta distribution, too, but the difference between the two approaches consists only in the normalization. In order to illustrate the procedure we consider two texts and state the rank-frequency distributions of word forms. For each separately we compute the lambda indicator defined as

Word forms, style and typology

Computing the vocabulary richness of a text has always been joined with two serious difficulties: the indicators usually depended on N, the text size (= number of tokens in text), and the variance of the vocabulary (Var(V)) could not be derived and computed. There are several trials to overcome this difficulty, for example in Ejiri, Smith (1993) who normalized the relationship between V and N and proposed a useful but non-testable indicator. In our previous work (cf. Popescu, Ma utek, Altmann 2009; Popescu et al. 2010) we tried to involve into computations the arc length formed between the individual frequencies of the rank-frequency distribution. In this case the vocabulary of word-forms or lemmas represents simply the inventory (= number of types). Since the maximal value of the arc length can easily be computed, the arc length can be relativized and its variance can be derived. An asymptotic test is possible. Nevertheless, the arc length increases with increasing text length, too, thus at last, one must try to normalize it in such a way that N plays only the role of a constant; in such a case an indicator based on the rank-frequency distribution can be used both for measuring style differences as well as differences between languages, i.e. for typological purposes. In the past, one frequently tried to stabilize or to normalize the TTR and create an indicator of vocabulary richness but one could not eliminate the impact of text size. The problems connected with these endeavours are shown in Wimmer, Altmann (1999). In the present paper we do not touch either TTR or vocabulary richness but concentrate on the rank-frequency distribution alone. Let V be the vocabulary of word-forms in a text, {f1,f2,...fV} be the sequence of ranked frequencies of word forms, N the text length (= number of tokens). Let the arc length be defined as

Ord´s criterion in musical texts

Ord ́s criterion is a function of moments of a distribution. The present article tries to use it for characterization of musical texts and their development. The utility of Ord ́s criterion for classification, discrimination and tracking down the evolution of linguistic texts has been shown in many publications (Ammermann 2001; Best, Kaspar 2001; Best 2001, 2006, 2006a; Kühner 2007; Oakes 2007; Popescu et al. 2009; Wimmer, Altmann 1998). In musicology it was introduced by Martináková-Rendeková (2002, 2007). It is a simple empirical two-dimensional indicator characterizing the distribution of some units or their properties (e.g. frequency, length, polysemy, polytexty, etc.). Ord (1967, 1972) introduced it for the localization of the Ord-family of distributions (cf. Wimmer, Altmann 1999: 478) defining as