Word spectrum
The word spectrum of a text is the frequency distribution of the lengths of the words it contains, measured in letters, morphemes or syllables .
The term was introduced by the American geophysicist Thomas Corwin Mendenhall , who studied the distribution of frequencies of certain word lengths in various English authors. Corwin compared the concept of the word spectrum to the light spectrum ; he considered word spectra to be as characteristic as metallurgical spectra, and tried to help clarify the authorship of Shakespear's works .
Mendenhall's work on word spectra was inspired by a letter from the English mathematician Augustus De Morgan , which he had written as early as 1851, but which was only published in 1882 after De Morgan's death in 1871. In this letter, De Morgan wrote:
“I would expect that one man who writes on two different subjects would find more similarities than two different men who write on the same subject. In the near future it will be possible to use this test to unmask forgeries. Mind you, I told you. "
literature
- David Crystal : The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language . Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1993, Section 12: Stylistic Identity and Literature , p. 68 (Translated and edited by Stefan Röhrich, Ariane Böckler and Mandred Jansen).