Word‐Length distribution in Inuktitut narratives: Empirical and theoretical findings
This paper deals with the distribution of word length in short native mythological and historical Eskimo narrative texts. To my knowledge, no Eskimo‐Aleut data have been the object of quantitative linguistic investigation so far. Due to the strong linguistic and Stylistic homogeneity of the examined...
Published in: | Journal of Quantitative Linguistics |
---|---|
Main Author: | |
Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
Language: | English |
Published: |
2015
|
Subjects: | |
Online Access: | https://ids-pub.bsz-bw.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/3820 https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:bsz:mh39-38209 https://doi.org/10.1080/09296179708590090 https://ids-pub.bsz-bw.de/files/3820/Meyer%20Word-Length%20Distribution%20in%20Inuktitut%20Narratives%201997.pdf |
id |
ftinstdeusprache:oai:ids-pub.bsz-bw.de:3820 |
---|---|
record_format |
openpolar |
spelling |
ftinstdeusprache:oai:ids-pub.bsz-bw.de:3820 2023-05-15T13:14:31+02:00 Word‐Length distribution in Inuktitut narratives: Empirical and theoretical findings Meyer, Peter 2015-06-30 application/pdf https://ids-pub.bsz-bw.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/3820 https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:bsz:mh39-38209 https://doi.org/10.1080/09296179708590090 https://ids-pub.bsz-bw.de/files/3820/Meyer%20Word-Length%20Distribution%20in%20Inuktitut%20Narratives%201997.pdf eng eng https://ids-pub.bsz-bw.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/3820 urn:nbn:de:bsz:mh39-38209 https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:bsz:mh39-38209 https://doi.org/10.1080/09296179708590090 https://ids-pub.bsz-bw.de/files/3820/Meyer%20Word-Length%20Distribution%20in%20Inuktitut%20Narratives%201997.pdf https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/ info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess Sprachstatistik Inuktitut Wortlänge Erzählstruktur ddc:410 article doc-type:article 2015 ftinstdeusprache https://doi.org/10.1080/09296179708590090 2023-04-07T14:43:08Z This paper deals with the distribution of word length in short native mythological and historical Eskimo narrative texts. To my knowledge, no Eskimo‐Aleut data have been the object of quantitative linguistic investigation so far. Due to the strong linguistic and Stylistic homogeneity of the examined texts it was assumed that these texts can be subsumed under a single law of word length distribution, if word length distribution of a text is considered as a function of certain of its properties, such as author, language, and genre. So far, word length distribution in texts of a wide variety of languages and genres has been demonstrated to follow distributions of the compound Poisson family of discrete probability distributions. In view of the morphological idiosyncrasies of the Eskimo language in general, which are responsible for an unusually high mean word length of about 4.5 to 5.2 syllables per word in the texts, it is interesting to see whether Eskimo texts show a significantly different behaviour with respect to word length. The results demonstrate that the Eskimo data employed in this study can be fitted well by the Hyperpoisson distribution. Two further discrete probability distributions will be deduced from certain morphology‐based assumptions about Eskimo. It turns out that most of the Eskimo data can be fitted by these two distributions. The question to what extent these results point to a more grammar‐oriented theory of word length is also discussed. Article in Journal/Newspaper aleut eskimo* Eskimo–Aleut inuktitut Institut für Deutsche Sprache: Publikationsserver Journal of Quantitative Linguistics 4 1-3 143 155 |
institution |
Open Polar |
collection |
Institut für Deutsche Sprache: Publikationsserver |
op_collection_id |
ftinstdeusprache |
language |
English |
topic |
Sprachstatistik Inuktitut Wortlänge Erzählstruktur ddc:410 |
spellingShingle |
Sprachstatistik Inuktitut Wortlänge Erzählstruktur ddc:410 Meyer, Peter Word‐Length distribution in Inuktitut narratives: Empirical and theoretical findings |
topic_facet |
Sprachstatistik Inuktitut Wortlänge Erzählstruktur ddc:410 |
description |
This paper deals with the distribution of word length in short native mythological and historical Eskimo narrative texts. To my knowledge, no Eskimo‐Aleut data have been the object of quantitative linguistic investigation so far. Due to the strong linguistic and Stylistic homogeneity of the examined texts it was assumed that these texts can be subsumed under a single law of word length distribution, if word length distribution of a text is considered as a function of certain of its properties, such as author, language, and genre. So far, word length distribution in texts of a wide variety of languages and genres has been demonstrated to follow distributions of the compound Poisson family of discrete probability distributions. In view of the morphological idiosyncrasies of the Eskimo language in general, which are responsible for an unusually high mean word length of about 4.5 to 5.2 syllables per word in the texts, it is interesting to see whether Eskimo texts show a significantly different behaviour with respect to word length. The results demonstrate that the Eskimo data employed in this study can be fitted well by the Hyperpoisson distribution. Two further discrete probability distributions will be deduced from certain morphology‐based assumptions about Eskimo. It turns out that most of the Eskimo data can be fitted by these two distributions. The question to what extent these results point to a more grammar‐oriented theory of word length is also discussed. |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Meyer, Peter |
author_facet |
Meyer, Peter |
author_sort |
Meyer, Peter |
title |
Word‐Length distribution in Inuktitut narratives: Empirical and theoretical findings |
title_short |
Word‐Length distribution in Inuktitut narratives: Empirical and theoretical findings |
title_full |
Word‐Length distribution in Inuktitut narratives: Empirical and theoretical findings |
title_fullStr |
Word‐Length distribution in Inuktitut narratives: Empirical and theoretical findings |
title_full_unstemmed |
Word‐Length distribution in Inuktitut narratives: Empirical and theoretical findings |
title_sort |
word‐length distribution in inuktitut narratives: empirical and theoretical findings |
publishDate |
2015 |
url |
https://ids-pub.bsz-bw.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/3820 https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:bsz:mh39-38209 https://doi.org/10.1080/09296179708590090 https://ids-pub.bsz-bw.de/files/3820/Meyer%20Word-Length%20Distribution%20in%20Inuktitut%20Narratives%201997.pdf |
genre |
aleut eskimo* Eskimo–Aleut inuktitut |
genre_facet |
aleut eskimo* Eskimo–Aleut inuktitut |
op_relation |
https://ids-pub.bsz-bw.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/3820 urn:nbn:de:bsz:mh39-38209 https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:bsz:mh39-38209 https://doi.org/10.1080/09296179708590090 https://ids-pub.bsz-bw.de/files/3820/Meyer%20Word-Length%20Distribution%20in%20Inuktitut%20Narratives%201997.pdf |
op_rights |
https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/ info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1080/09296179708590090 |
container_title |
Journal of Quantitative Linguistics |
container_volume |
4 |
container_issue |
1-3 |
container_start_page |
143 |
op_container_end_page |
155 |
_version_ |
1766264017176756224 |