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Fractal power law in literary English

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  • Gonçalves, L.L.
  • Gonçalves, L.B.

Abstract

We present in this paper a numerical investigation of literary texts by various well-known English writers, covering the first half of the twentieth century, based upon the results obtained through corpus analysis of the texts. A fractal power law is obtained for the lexical wealth defined as the ratio between the number of different words and the total number of words of a given text. By considering as a signature of each author the exponent and the amplitude of the power law, and the standard deviation of the lexical wealth, it is possible to discriminate works of different genres and writers and show that each writer has a very distinct signature, either considered among other literary writers or compared with writers of non-literary texts. It is also shown that, for a given author, the signature is able to discriminate between short stories and novels.

Suggested Citation

  • Gonçalves, L.L. & Gonçalves, L.B., 2006. "Fractal power law in literary English," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 360(2), pages 557-575.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:360:y:2006:i:2:p:557-575
    DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2005.06.049
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Mantegna,Rosario N. & Stanley,H. Eugene, 2007. "Introduction to Econophysics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521039871, October.
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    1. Bernhardsson, Sebastian & da Rocha, Luis Enrique Correa & Minnhagen, Petter, 2010. "Size-dependent word frequencies and translational invariance of books," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 389(2), pages 330-341.

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