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Lewis Carroll's Doublets Net of English Words: Network Heterogeneity in a Complex System

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  • Hsieh Fushing
  • Chen Chen
  • Yin-Chen Hsieh
  • Patrick Farrell

Abstract

Lewis Carroll's English word game Doublets is represented as a system of networks with each node being an English word and each connectivity edge confirming that its two ending words are equal in letter length, but different by exactly one letter. We show that this system, which we call the Doublets net, constitutes a complex body of linguistic knowledge concerning English word structure that has computable multiscale features. Distributed morphological, phonological and orthographic constraints and the language's local redundancy are seen at the node level. Phonological communities are seen at the network level. And a balancing act between the language's global efficiency and redundancy is seen at the system level. We develop a new measure of intrinsic node-to-node distance and a computational algorithm, called community geometry, which reveal the implicit multiscale structure within binary networks. Because the Doublets net is a modular complex cognitive system, the community geometry and computable multi-scale structural information may provide a foundation for understanding computational learning in many systems whose network structure has yet to be fully analyzed.

Suggested Citation

  • Hsieh Fushing & Chen Chen & Yin-Chen Hsieh & Patrick Farrell, 2014. "Lewis Carroll's Doublets Net of English Words: Network Heterogeneity in a Complex System," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(12), pages 1-25, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0114177
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0114177
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Martin A. Nowak & Natalia L. Komarova & Partha Niyogi, 2002. "Computational and evolutionary aspects of language," Nature, Nature, vol. 417(6889), pages 611-617, June.
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