Berlin 2015 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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SOE: Fachverband Physik sozio-ökonomischer Systeme

SOE 13: Opinion Formation, Segregation, and Language Dynamics

SOE 13.5: Vortrag

Mittwoch, 18. März 2015, 16:00–16:15, MA 001

Universality and Variation in Language — •Martin Gerlach and Eduardo G. Altmann — Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, Dresden, Germany

Natural language is a remarkable example of complex dynamical systems which combines variation and universal structure. This combination can be studied in detail looking at the statistical analysis of word frequencies in written texts. On the one hand, there are universal laws (e.g., Zipf’s and Heaps’ laws) which are extremely robust with respect to language, topic, and time. On the other hand, all languages are constantly changing and word frequencies show a strong variation across time and topics. Starting from large records of written texts we investigate the statistical and dynamical processes underlying the co-existence of variation and universality in word statistics. Our findings find applications in problems of information retrieval and language change (e.g., the adoption of new words).
[1] M. Gerlach and E. G. Altmann, "Scaling laws and fluctuations in the statistics of word frequencies", New J. Physics 15, 113010 (2014)
[2] F. Ghanbarnejad, M. Gerlach, J. M. Miotto, and E. G. Altmann, "Extracting information from S-curves of language change", J. R. Soc. Interface 11, 20141044 (2014)
[3] M. Gerlach and E. G. Altmann, "Stochastic model for the vocabulary growth in natural languages", Phys. Rev. X 3, 021006 (2013)