Using the parameters of the Zipf–Mandelbrot law to measure diachronic lexical, syntactical and stylistic changes – a large-scale corpus analysis
- Using the Google Ngram Corpora for six different languages (including two varieties of English), a large-scale time series analysis is conducted. It is demonstrated that diachronic changes of the parameters of the Zipf–Mandelbrot law (and the parameter of the Zipf law, all estimated by maximum likelihood) can be used to quantify and visualize important aspects of linguistic change (as represented in the Google Ngram Corpora). The analysis also reveals that there are important cross-linguistic differences. It is argued that the Zipf–Mandelbrot parameters can be used as a first indicator of diachronic linguistic change, but more thorough analyses should make use of the full spectrum of different lexical, syntactical and stylometric measures to fully understand the factors that actually drive those changes.
Download full text files
Additional Services
Statistics
| Author: | Alexander KoplenigORCiDGND |
|---|---|
| URN: | urn:nbn:de:bsz:mh39-73491 |
| DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1515/cllt-2014-0049 |
| ISSN: | 1613-7035 |
| Parent Title (English): | Corpus linguistics and linguistic theory |
| Publisher: | de Gruyter |
| Place of publication: | Berlin [u.a.] |
| Document Type: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Year of first Publication: | 2018 |
| Date of Publication (online): | 2018/04/16 |
| Publicationstate: | Zweitveröffentlichung |
| Reviewstate: | Peer-Review |
| Tag: | Google Ngram Corpora; Zipf–Mandelbrot law; Zipf’s law; diachronic corpus linguistics; lexical richness; noun–pronoun ratio; power law; syntactic complexity; time series analysis; type token ratio; vocabulary size |
| Volume: | 14 |
| Issue: | 1 |
| First Page: | 1 |
| Last Page: | 34 |
| Note: | Dieser Beitrag ist mit Zustimmung des Rechteinhabers aufgrund einer (DFG geförderten) Allianz- bzw. Nationallizenz frei zugänglich. This publication is with permission of the rights owner freely accessible due to an Alliance licence and a national licence (funded by the DFG, German Research Foundation) respectively. |
| DDC classes: | 400 Sprache / 400 Sprache, Linguistik |
| Open Access?: | ja |
| Leibniz-Classification: | Sprache, Linguistik |
| Linguistics-Classification: | Korpuslinguistik |
| Program areas: | Lexik |
| Licence (German): |  Creative Commons - Namensnennung-Nicht kommerziell-Keine Bearbeitung 3.0 Deutschland |