TITLE:
Comparison of Word Length Distributions in Spoken and Written Chinese
AUTHORS:
Heng Chen
KEYWORDS:
Word Length, Chinese, Zipf-Alekseev’s Function, Measurement Units, Text Styles
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Access Library Journal,
Vol.5 No.6,
June
14,
2018
ABSTRACT: In this study we apply Zipf-Alecseev’s function to word length distributions of Chinese prose and dialogue texts. Since there are two potential measurement units of Chinese word length, we applied Zipf-Alecseev’s function to both of them. The results show that all the word length distributions fit Zipf-Alecseev’s function, no matter the word length is measured in characters or components. The parameters a and b in Zipf-Alecseev’s function y = cxa bln(x) show no difference in different text styles (which are prose and dialogue in our case). However, the parameters are different when word length is measured in different units (character and component respectively). This indicates that the Zipf-Alecseev’s function is sensitive to word length measurement units, but not text styles.