Quantitative text analysis using L-, F- and T-segments

Abstract

It is shown that word length and other properties of linguistic units display a lawful behavior not only in form of distributions but also with respect to their syntagmatic arrangement in a text. Based on L-segments (units of constant or increasing lengths), F-segments, and T-segments (units of constant or increasing frequency or polytextuality respectively), the dynamic behavior of segment patterns is investigated. Theoretical models are derived on the basis of plausible assumptions on influences of the properties of individual units on the properties of their constituents in the text. The corresponding hypotheses are tested on data from 66 German texts of four authors and two different genres. Experiments with various characteristics show promising properties which could be useful for author and/or genre discrimination.