Optimization of parameters in the Menzerath-Altmann law. II. (English) Zbl 1310.62037

Andres, Jan; Benešová, Martina; Chvosteková, Martina; Fišerová, Eva

Acta Univ. Palacki. Olomuc., Fac. Rerum Nat., Math. 53, No. 2, 5-28 (2014).

Summary: The paper continues our studies released under the same title [the first author et al., Acta Univ. Palacki. Olomuc., Fac. Rerum Nat., Math. 51, No. 1, 5–27 (2012; Zbl 1275.91115)]. As the main result justifying the conclusions in by the first author et al. [loc. cit.] the theorem is presented enunciating that the English original of Poe’s celebrated poem Raven is a language fractal only w.r.t. the application of the simplest truncated formulas of the Menzerath-Altmann law, but not w.r.t. other applied formulas under our consideration.
Moreover, the related degree of semanticity is calculated in these cases, including the naive intervals of such a degree. A suitability of the applied formulas is discussed from the point of view of a verbal version of the Menzerath-Altmann law (i.e. the tendency of the approximating functions is to be decreasing) and by means of quantitative criteria characterizing the accuracy of fitted data. Our discussion extends the traditional approaches to the Menzerath-Altmann law.

MSC:

62F25	Parametric tolerance and confidence regions
62J05	Linear regression; mixed models
91F20	Linguistics

Keywords:

Menzerath-Altmann law; fractal analysis; accuracy of data approximations; accuracy of shape parameter estimates; optimal usage of formulas

Citations:

Zbl 1275.91115

Software:

bootstrap

References:

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