5
votes
Accepted
How to interpret this form of Heaps' Law?
A straightforward rewriting of the Wikipedia formula gives
log V_R(n) = log K*n^beta
= log K + log n^beta
= log K + beta*log n
This allows us to identify K=C and beta=-alpha (...
- 28.3k
4
votes
Is there a topic in linguistics that uses differential calculus or AP stats level statistics?
Statistics are very useful in linguistics, but the relevant techniques go far beyond AP level. Calculus is not directly useful, but calculus (especially integral) is essential background for higher-...
- 572
3
votes
Are there any good theories explaining the language aspect of the Zipf Mystery?
One research group at our university is particularly interested in the statistical properties of language. One professor, Michael Ramscar, is teaching us some classes this semester on related topics. ...
- 573
3
votes
Are there laws of semantic change?
This is a good question but only in the sense that it opens a possibility for rejecting the very premise on which it is based.
The short answer is, there are no laws formulated for linguistics that ...
- 10.6k
3
votes
Is there a topic in linguistics that uses differential calculus or AP stats level statistics?
For sure, statistics and probability theory has been extensively used in linguistics, you can see for example the papers published in the Journal of Quantitative Linguistics. On the other hand, I do ...
- 451
3
votes
Is there a topic in linguistics that uses differential calculus or AP stats level statistics?
Linguistics uses various mathematical tools. Statistics is widely used in many sub-disciplines. Work in phonetics, for example, typically requires at least the level of statistical training that you ...
- 74.9k
2
votes
What is the most synthetic popularly spoken language?
I propose that it is Shona, which has 7 million speakers. It has a very productive verb morphology, where any verb root has on the order of 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 inflected ...
- 74.9k
2
votes
Is there a branch of linguistics using Calculus as a mathematical tool?
There's a mathematical physicist who related graphs grammars and Feynman graphs. She comes up with the, perhaps unwarranted, conclusion that any context free graph grammar determines an insertion Lie ...
- 336
2
votes
Statistic for root-efficiency in languages
On the second question, I think measures of morphological productivity are what you're looking for. If you search around, you should be able to find information on productivity measures easily, e.g. ...
- 3,391
1
vote
Accepted
Classifying the verbs in a small corpus
I assume these are your hypotheses:
H0: The verb is passive 92% of the time.
H1: The verb is passive 100% of the time.
You can't apply a t-test in this case; there's no t-statistic that can be ...
- 3,391
1
vote
Shannon's entropy as a measure of vocabulary richness
The entropy formula as quoted has some ideosyncrasies making it different from standard Shannon entropy
There is a (not really relevant) factor of 100 (probably to produce more beautiful numbers)
The ...
- 28.3k
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