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Entropic Analysis Of The Role Of Words In Literary Texts

Author

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  • MARCELO A. MONTEMURRO

    (Facultad de Matemática, Astronomía y Física, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Ciudad Universitaria, 5000 Córdoba, Argentina)

  • DAMIÁN H. ZANETTE

    (Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientí ficas y Técnicas, Centro Atómico Bariloche and Instituto Balseiro, 8400 Bariloche, Río Negro, Argentina)

Abstract

Beyond the local constraints imposed by grammar, words concatenated in long sequences carrying a complex message show statistical regularities that may reflect their linguistic role in the message. In this paper, we perform a systematic statistical analysis of the use of words in literary English corpora. We show that there is a quantitative relation between the role of content words in literary English and the Shannon information entropy defined over an appropriate probability distribution. Without assuming any previous knowledge about the syntactic structure of language, we are able to cluster certain groups of words according to their specific role in the text.

Suggested Citation

  • Marcelo A. Montemurro & Damián H. Zanette, 2002. "Entropic Analysis Of The Role Of Words In Literary Texts," Advances in Complex Systems (ACS), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 5(01), pages 7-17.
    • Handle: RePEc:wsi:acsxxx:v:05:y:2002:i:01:n:s0219525902000493
    DOI: 10.1142/S0219525902000493
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    Cited by:

    1. Rosso, Osvaldo A. & Craig, Hugh & Moscato, Pablo, 2009. "Shakespeare and other English Renaissance authors as characterized by Information Theory complexity quantifiers," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 388(6), pages 916-926.
    2. Louise Bogéa Ribeiro & Anderson Raiol Rodrigues & Kauê Machado Costa & Manoel da Silva Filho, 2019. "Quantification of textual comprehension difficulty with an information theory-based algorithm," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 5(1), pages 1-9, December.
    3. Ke, Xiaohua & Zeng, Yongqiang & Ma, Qinghua & Zhu, Lin, 2014. "Complex dynamics of text analysis," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 415(C), pages 307-314.
    4. Antiqueira, L. & Nunes, M.G.V. & Oliveira Jr., O.N. & F. Costa, L. da, 2007. "Strong correlations between text quality and complex networks features," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 373(C), pages 811-820.

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