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The dependence of frequency distributions on multiple meanings of words, codes and signs

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  • Yan, Xiaoyong
  • Minnhagen, Petter

Abstract

The dependence of the frequency distributions due to multiple meanings of words in a text is investigated by deleting letters. By coding the words with fewer letters the number of meanings per coded word increases. This increase is measured and used as an input in a predictive theory. For a text written in English, the word-frequency distribution is broad and fat-tailed, whereas if the words are only represented by their first letter the distribution becomes exponential. Both distribution are well predicted by the theory, as is the whole sequence obtained by consecutively representing the words by the first L=6,5,4,3,2,1 letters. Comparisons of texts written by Chinese characters and the same texts written by letter-codes are made and the similarity of the corresponding frequency-distributions are interpreted as a consequence of the multiple meanings of Chinese characters. This further implies that the difference of the shape for word-frequencies for an English text written by letters and a Chinese text written by Chinese characters is due to the coding and not to the language per se.

Suggested Citation

  • Yan, Xiaoyong & Minnhagen, Petter, 2018. "The dependence of frequency distributions on multiple meanings of words, codes and signs," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 490(C), pages 554-564.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:490:y:2018:i:c:p:554-564
    DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2017.08.133
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Yan, Xiaoyong & Minnhagen, Petter, 2016. "Randomness versus specifics for word-frequency distributions," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 444(C), pages 828-837.
    2. Montemurro, Marcelo A., 2001. "Beyond the Zipf–Mandelbrot law in quantitative linguistics," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 300(3), pages 567-578.
    3. 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.
    4. Yan, Xiaoyong & Minnhagen, Petter & Jensen, Henrik Jeldtoft, 2016. "The likely determines the unlikely," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 456(C), pages 112-119.
    5. Xiaoyong Yan & Petter Minnhagen, 2015. "Maximum Entropy, Word-Frequency, Chinese Characters, and Multiple Meanings," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(5), pages 1-19, May.
    6. Weibing Deng & Armen Allahverdyan & Bo Li & Qiuping Wang, 2014. "Rank-frequency relation for Chinese characters," The European Physical Journal B: Condensed Matter and Complex Systems, Springer;EDP Sciences, vol. 87(2), pages 1-20, February.
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    Cited by:

    1. Yan, Xiaoyong & Yang, Seong-Gyu & Kim, Beom Jun & Minnhagen, Petter, 2018. "Benford’s law and first letter of words," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 512(C), pages 305-315.

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