Menzerath-Altmann law: statistical mechanical interpretation as applied to a linguistic organization

DOI10.1007/S10955-014-1078-8zbMATH Open1302.82143arXiv1307.7140OpenAlexW3100777160MaRDI QIDQ478450FDOQ478450

Authors: Sertac Eroglu 

Publication date: 3 December 2014

Published in: Journal of Statistical Physics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: The distribution behavior dictated by the Menzerath-Altmann (MA) law is frequently encountered in linguistic and natural organizations at various structural levels. The mathematical form of this empirical law comprises three fitting parameters whose values tend to be elusive, especially in inter-organizational studies. To allow interpretation of these parameters and better understand such distribution behavior, we present a statistical mechanical approach based on an analogy between the classical particles of a statistical mechanical organization and the number of distinct words in a textual organization. With this derivation, we achieve a transformed (generalized) form of the MA model, termed the statistical mechanical Menzerath-Altmann (SMMA) model. This novel transformed model consists of four parameters, one of which is a structure-dependent input parameter, and three of which are free-fitting parameters. Using distinct word data sets from two text corpora, we verified that the SMMA model describes the same distribution as the MA model. We propose that the additional structure-dependent parameter of the SMMA model converts the three fitting parameters into structure-independent parameters. Moreover, the parameters of the SMMA model are associated with a corresponding physical interpretation that can lead to characterization of an organization' s thermodynamic properties. We also propose that many organizations presenting MA law behavior, whether linguistic or not, can be examined by the SMMA distribution model through the properly defined structural degeneracy parameter and the energy associated states.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1307.7140

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zbMATH Keywords

self-organizationstatistical inferenceBoltzmann distributioncollective phenomenamodel generalizationsemiotic sequences

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Applications of statistics to social sciences (62P25) Linguistics (91F20) Applications of statistical mechanics to specific types of physical systems (82D99)

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Cited In (3)

• Optimization of parameters in the Menzerath-Altmann law
• When is Menzerath-Altmann law mathematically trivial? A new approach
• Optimization of parameters in the Menzerath-Altmann law. II.

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