Wrong Zipfsches law

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The wrong Zipf law is formulated as a law observation to be thrifty in the use of language .

origin

George Kingsley Zipf has formulated a number of linguistic hypotheses as laws, e.g. B. on the relationship between word length and word frequency. Against this background, one was occasionally wrongly ascribed to him, which is why it was later referred to as the "wrong" Zipf's law, in contrast to the real Zipf's law . In linguistics, there is an observation, formulated as a law, about the economy in the use of language, which in part also circulates as Zipf's law . It is hardly related to the original and was probably not intended by George Kingsley Zipf . Even if the author cannot be identified, this Zipf's law is an important and significant statement about how language is created.

For naming see Folk theorem .

statement

This false law of Zipf says that utterances in a language always arise from a compromise between two opposing tendencies in the speaker:

  • on the one hand from the desire to convey information as comprehensibly as possible, which leads to repetition ( redundancy ) and detail, and
  • on the other hand, out of thrift, the need to use as little physical and mental energy as possible in the production of speech .

meaning

This Zipf's law is a hypothesis about the change of phonemes within a language (s) over time ( sound change ): Through gradual progressive adaptations as changes in the spoken sounds, their contribution to the overall information changes because they change over time to the sound value of others Approaching or moving away from sounds. If a sound L1 approaches the sound value of sound L2, the information value of L2 becomes smaller and smaller, which makes it necessary to also change sound value L2; Approaching the sound value of L2 to L3 makes a change in L3 necessary, etc. This development, which has been released from the speech economy, can end in a radical change in many sounds within the framework of a domino effect and thus even alienate languages ​​from the same language family (cf. German and Dutch). Provided that this hypothesis proves itself in practice, it could make some important contributions in phonetics and in general language change research .

See also

literature

  • Helmut Birkhan : The "Zipfsche law", the weak past tense and the Germanic sound shift , Verl. D. Austrian Akad. D. Wiss., 1979 ISBN 3700102852
  • David Crystal : The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. Campus, Frankfurt / New York 1993, ISBN 3-593-34824-1
  • X. Gabaix: Zipf's law for cities: An explanation . In: Quarterly Journal of Economics 114 (3): 739-767 AUG 1999
  • Henry Guiter, MV Arapov (eds.): Studies on Zipfs Law. Brockmeyer, Bochum 1982, ISBN 3-88339-244-8
  • M. Marsili, YC Zhang: Interacting individuals leading to Zipf's law . In: Physical Review Letters 80 (12): 2741-2744 MAR 23 1998
  • George Kingsley Zipf: The Psycho-Biology of Language. An Introduction to Dynamic Philology. The MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. 1935/1968
  • George Kingsley Zipf: Human Behavior and the Principle of Least Effort. An Introduction to Human Ecology. Addison-Wesley, Cambridge MA 1949.

Web links

Wiktionary: Zipf's law  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations