Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
---|---|---|---|---|
9514494 | Electronic Notes in Discrete Mathematics | 2005 | 4 Pages |
Abstract
Zipf's law - or Estoup-Zipf's law - is an empirical fact of computational linguistics which relates rank and frequency of words in natural languages. The law suggests modelling by distributions of “hyperbolic type”. We present a satisfactory general definition and an information theoretical characterization of the resulting hyperbolic distributions. When applied to linguistics this leads to a property of stability and flexibility, explaining that a language can develop towards higher and higher expressive powers without changing its basic structure.
Keywords
Related Topics
Physical Sciences and Engineering
Mathematics
Discrete Mathematics and Combinatorics
Authors
Peter Harremoës, Flemming Topsoe,