Law of distribution of rhythmic units of various lengths

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In linguistics, the length of rhythmic units is determined by how many syllables occur between two stressed syllables in a sentence or text. If two stressed syllables follow one another, one has a rhythmic unit of length 1; if two stressed syllables are separated by an unstressed one, one has a rhythmic unit of length 2 etc.

On the regularity of the distribution of rhythmic units

Investigations into the distribution of rhythmic units of different lengths go back to the German psychologist Karl Marbe (1904). His students and colleagues have continued this research in several languages. They were taken up again in the Quantitative Linguistics project in Göttingen and tested to see whether they behave according to a law of language, not always with good results. For the surveys that Marbe himself carried out on one text each by Goethe and Heine , and for new investigations on other texts, it can be shown that rhythmic units in the text are subject to the same language law as, for example, word lengths. This also applies to 6 German texts (convoluted) that Bianchi wrote in 1922. The geometric distribution could be used successfully for ancient Greek texts that Albert Thumb was already working on. Further results: The Hyperpoisson distribution has proven itself as a model for around 50 German and 30 English texts, and the binomial distribution for 20 Russian texts.

In all cases, it is a question of distributions that can be derived from one and the same approach under slightly different assumptions.

An example

An example of a distribution of rhythmic units of different lengths (measured as the number of unstressed syllables between two stressed syllables) in a short press release:

x n (x) NP (x)
1 20th 20.29
2 113 110.45
3 111 114.49
4th 69 65.58
5 22nd 25.95
6th 10 7.85
7th 2 2.40

(Where x is: number of unstressed syllables between two stressed ones, starting with x = 1 for the absence of an unstressed syllable between two stressed ones, x = 2 for the occurrence of an unstressed syllable between two stressed ones, and so on; n (x) those in this one Text Observed number of rhythmic units with x unstressed syllables; NP (x) the number of rhythmic units with x unstressed syllables calculated when fitting the Hyperpoisson distribution to the observed data. Result: the Hyperpoisson distribution is for this Text a good model with the test criterion P = 0.81, where P is considered good if it is greater than / equal to 0.05. For more detailed explanations, please refer to the cited literature.)

Importance of the law

The law of the distribution of rhythmic units of different lengths is a fairly new (re) discovery of a language law by quantitative linguistics , which once again sees its view confirmed that the use of language, like the language system, is controlled by laws.

See also

literature

  • Karl-Heinz Best : Probability Distributions of Language Entities . In: Journal of Quantitative Linguistics 8, 2001, pp. 1-11.
  • Karl-Heinz Best: For the distribution of rhythmic units in German prose. In: Karl-Heinz Best (editor): Frequency distributions in texts . Peust & Gutschmidt, Göttingen 2001, pages 162-166. ISBN 3-933043-08-5 .
  • Karl-Heinz Best: The distribution of rhythmic units in German short prose . In: Glottometrics 3 (= To Honor GK Zipf), 2002, pages 136-142. (PDF full text )
  • Karl-Heinz Best: Lengths of rhythmic units . In: Reinhard Köhler, Gabriel Altmann, & Rajmund G. Piotrowski (editor): Quantitative Linguistics - Quantitative Linguistics. An international manual . de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, pages 208-214. ISBN 3-11-015578-8 .
  • Karl-Heinz Best: Rhythmic units in ancient Greek. In: Göttinger Contributions to Linguistics 13, 2006, pp. 73–76.
  • Karl-Heinz Best: Quantitative research on rhythm . In: Göttinger Contributions to Linguistics 15, 2007, pages 7-14.
  • Karl-Heinz Best: Rhythmic units in pods, nature considerations (1800) . In: Emmerich Kelih, Viktor Levickij, Gabriel Altmann (Eds.), Metody analizu tekstu / Methods of Text Analysis . Cernivci: Cerniveckyj nacional'nyj universitet 2009, pp. 53-62. ISBN 978-966-423-043-5 .
  • Marina Knaus: On the distribution of rhythmic units in Russian prose. In: Glottometrics 16, 2008, pages 57-62. (PDF full text )
  • Ioan-Iovitz Popescu, Karl-Heinz Best, Gabriel Altmann : Unified Modeling of Length in Language . RAM-Verlag, Lüdenscheid 2014. ISBN 978-3-942303-26-2 . (Chapter "Rhythmic units", pages 89–90.)
  • Andrew Wilson: Lengths and L-motifs of Rhythmical Units in Formal British Speech . In: Glottometrics 48, 2020, pages 37-51. (PDF full text )

To the Marbe school

  • Karl-Heinz Best: Karl Marbe (1869–1953). In: Glottometrics 9, 2005, pages 74-76. Full text (PDF) . (The paper gives a biographical sketch and goes into Marbe's efforts at analogy and his investigation of the prose rhythm which a number of his students and later linguists followed. This is Marbe's importance for quantitative linguistics .)
  • Martin Friedmann: The prose rhythm of Hebrew in the Old Testament. Diss. Phil., Würzburg 1921/22.
  • Friedrich Gropp: On the aesthetics and statistical description of the prose rhythm. Royal University Printing House H. Stütz, Würzburg 1915. (= Diss. Phil., Würzburg 1915)
  • EC Kagarov: le langage Sur du rythme prosaïque russe , in: Comptes-Rendus de l'Académie des Sciences de l'URSS 1928 (Е. Г. Кагаров: О ритме русской прозаической речи in: Доклады Академии Наук СССР 1928 )
  • Abram Lipsky: Rhythm as a distinguishing characteristic of prose style. In: Archives of Psychology 4, June 1907.
  • Karl Marbe: About the rhythm of prose . J. Ricker'sche Verlagbuchhandlung, Giessen 1904.
  • Hugo Unser: About the rhythm of German prose. University printing house of J. Hörning, Heidelberg 1906. (= Diss. Phil., Freiburg)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://wwwuser.gwdg.de/~kbest
  2. ↑ Gejza Wimmer, Gabriel Altmann: The Theory of Word Length Distribution: Some Results and Generalizations. In: Peter Schmidt (Ed.): Glottometrika 15 . Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, Trier 1996, pages 112-133; Gejza Wimmer, Reinhard Köhler, Rüdiger Grotjahn & Gabriel Altmann: Towards a Theory of Word Length Distribution. In: Journal of Quantitative Linguistics 1, 1994, pp. 98-106.
  3. ↑ Lorenzo Bianchi: Investigations into the prose rhythm of Johann Peter Hebels, Heinrich von Kleists and the Brothers Grimm. Weiss'sche Universitätsbuchhandlung, Heidelberg 1922; Biographical information and tests on it: Karl-Heinz Best: Lorenzo Bianchi (1899-196) . In: Glottometrics 14, 2007, pages 72-98 (PDF full text ).
  4. ↑ Karl-Heinz Best: Rhythmic units in ancient Greek. In: Göttinger Contributions to Linguistics 13, 2006, pp. 73–76.
  5. ↑ Anja Kaßel: On the distribution of rhythmic units in German and English texts. State examination thesis; Göttingen 2002
  6. ↑ Marina Knaus: On the distribution of rhythmic units in Russian prose . In: Glottometrics 16, 2008, pages 57-62 (PDF full text ).
  7. ↑ Kaßel 2002, page 78. It is the text by Ira von Mellenthin: "Executioner of Genoa" for 59 murder cases in court. Friedrich Engel at the age of 92 in the dock. In: Die Welt , May 7, 2002.
  8. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original dated August 11, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / lql.uni-trier.de