Writing statistics
Font statistics is the paralinguistic discipline of quantitative analysis of writing systems .
Subjects of written statistics
Application-related aspects
Writing statistics has a long tradition of recording the frequencies of letters and other characters in different languages. It may go to purely practical purposes, such a question because of the known frequency of letters encrypted texts to decipher (De- cryptography ). Another practical approach was surveys on the frequency of letters and letter combinations in order to achieve the most sensible and economical design of shorthands . In this respect, it is a traditional research area of language statistics . The font statistics were also helpful when designing optimal keyboard layouts .
Theory-related aspects
Beyond these practical purposes, quantitative linguistics has dealt with writing systems. For example, it can be shown that the design of characters and writing systems is subject to certain regularities. If, for example, the letters of a text or a text corpus are ranked according to their frequency, this ranking is subject to certain laws. The same applies to the use of characters, the design of which can vary in complexity and the distribution of which in texts depends on this complexity, as is particularly evident with Chinese characters.
Another area in which regularities can be shown is the history of the proliferation of characters in languages such as Chinese, which does not use a letter script but a largely logographic script. The increase in characters, for which dates are available from around 200 BC to 1995, follows a well-known law of growth, the Piotrowski law .
literature
- Gabriel Altmann , Fan Fengxiang (Ed.): Analyzes of Script. Properties of Characters and Writing Systems . Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2008 (The articles in the book provide an overview of the questions with which quantitative linguistics seeks to grasp the writing systems. One article tries to open up the perspective of a writing theory.).
- Karl-Heinz Best : On the frequency of letters, spaces and other characters in German texts . In: Glottometrics 11, 2005, pages 9–31 (PDF full text ).
Individual evidence
- ↑ The best-known work belongs here: Friedrich Wilhelm Kaeding [Hrsg.]: Frequency dictionary of the German language. Established by a working committee of the German stenography systems. First part: word and syllable counts. Second part: letter counts. Self-published by the editor, Steglitz near Berlin: 1897/98. Partial print in: Supplement to basic studies in cybernetics and humanities. Vol. 4/1963.
- ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original from April 7, 2015 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.
- ↑ On the possibility of determining the complexity of characters, see among others: Gabriel Altmann: Script complexity , in: Glottometrics 8, 2004, pp. 68–74 (PDF full text ); Carsten Peust: Script Complexity Revisited , in: Glottometrics 12, 2006, pp. 11–15 (PDF full text ); Tomi S. Melka, Gabriel Altmann: Script complexity: A Case Study , in: Glottometrics 28, 2014, pp. 56–74 (PDF full text ).
- ↑ Xiaoli Yu: On the complexity of Chinese characters. In: Göttinger Contributions to Linguistics 5, 2001, pages 121–129.
- ↑ Hartmut Bohn: Quantitative Studies of the Modern Chinese Language and Writing. Publishing house Dr. Kovač, Hamburg 1998, pages 52-56, 78-94. ISBN 3-86064-672-9 .
- ↑ http://lql.uni-trier.de/index.php/Char_Complexity
- ^ Panchanan Mohanty, Ioan-Iovitz Popescu, Gabriel Altmann : Script Complexity in Indian Languages . In: Glottometrics 44, 2019, pages 94-99 (PDF full text ).
- ↑ Karl-Heinz Best , Jinyang Zhu: A model for the increase in Chinese characters . In: Glottometrics 20, 2010, pages 29–33 (PDF full text ).
