Statistical Universals of Language: Mathematical Chance vs. Human Choice by Kumiko Tanaka-Ishii
English | PDF,EPUB | 2021 | 226 Pages | ISBN : 3030593762 | 11.5 MB
This volume explores the universal mathematical properties underlying big language data and possible reasons why such properties exist, revealing how we may be unconsciously mathematical in our language use. These properties are statistical and thus different from linguistic universals that contribute to describing the variation of human languages, and they can only be identified over a large accumulation of usages. The book provides an overview of state-of-the art findings on these statistical universals and reconsiders the nature of language accordingly, with Zipf's law as a well-known example.