Statistical Linguistics

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The Statistical Linguistics (other names the discipline: language statistics , Linguostatistik ) summarizes the efforts of linguistics to raise linguistic phenomena statistically. The term statistical linguistics has gotten out of use in linguistics and is not understood in a completely uniform way. Glück (2002) refers to language statistics from the keyword statistical linguistics , while Bußmann (2005) refers to quantitative linguistics . However, the two disciplines are not identical: modern quantitative linguistics sees itself as a theory-building science, a claim that is not necessarily pursued by statistical linguistics.

Applications

Frequency of occurrence of index words in a corpus of Serbo-Croatian

The tasks of statistical linguistics include determining the frequencies of linguistic elements, for example with the aim of deciding which words are included in dictionaries because they correspond to linguistic usage and which are not. The full-text database set up by the Duden editorial team , for example, contains 1.4 billion word forms as a basis (as of spring 2009). On the basis of this basis, some statistical information on language phenomena in German is presented: frequency of letters, frequency distribution of word lengths and types of speech, the frequency of grammatical genders using the example of the article.

A number of other practical applications of statistical results can be mentioned: for example the Morse Code , in which the most frequent letters were given the shortest encodings, the development of shorthand and the organization of the typewriter keyboard as well as cryptology , in which decryption techniques also make use of statistical surveys.

literature

  • Hadumod Bußmann (Ed.) With the collaboration of Hartmut Lauffer: Lexikon der Sprachwissenschaft. 4th, revised and bibliographically supplemented edition. Kröner, Stuttgart 2008, ISBN 978-3-520-45204-7 .
  • Duden : The German spelling (Chapter: Language in Numbers , pages 155–165). 25th, completely revised and expanded edition. Dudenverlag, Mannheim / Vienna / Zurich 2009. ISBN 978-3-411-04015-5 .
  • Duden: German Universal Dictionary (Chapter: Language in Numbers , Pages 2106–2112). 7th, revised and expanded edition. Dudenverlag, Mannheim / Zurich 2011. ISBN 978-3-411-05507-4 .
  • Helmut Glück (Ed.): Metzler Lexicon Language . 4th edition; Verlag JB Metzler, Stuttgart and Weimar, 2010, ISBN 3-476-02335-4 .
  • Werner König : dtv-Atlas German language . 15th, revised and updated edition. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-423-03025-9 , chapter on German language statistics, pages 114–119.
  • Helmut Meier : German language statistics . 2nd, enlarged and improved edition. Olms, Hildesheim 1967, 1978, ISBN 3-487-00735-5 . (1st edition 1964)

Web links

Wiktionary: Statistical linguistics  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Duden: The German orthography , 25th, completely revised and expanded edition. Dudenverlag, Mannheim / Vienna / Zurich 2009, ISBN 978-3-411-04015-5 , pages 155-165.
  2. ↑ Wolfgang Boettcher, Wolfgang Herrlitz, Ernst Nündel, Bernd Switalla: language. The book that says everything about language. Westermann, Braunschweig 1983, ISBN 3-14-508881-5 , page 337.
  3. ^ Helmut Meier: German language statistics. Second enlarged and improved edition. Olms, Hildesheim 1967, page 329ff.
  4. ↑ Friedrich L. Bauer: Deciphered secrets. Codes and ciphers and how to break them. Springer, Berlin / Heidelberg 1995, page 213ff.