Multifractal Analysis of the Distribution of Three Grammatical Constructions in English Texts

ABSTRACT

Both the Menzerath-Altmann law and the Zipf-Mandelbrot law note that language is a fractal structure and, like any other fractals, follows power laws. Studies on fractal linguistics demonstrated that the relation between the scaling measures and the number of constituents in language indeed follow the power law probability distribution. However, most of these studies looked at languages from the structural perspective only, often ignoring the grammatical aspects of language structures. In this study, we ventured into English grammar and used a multifractal analysis to explore the nature of multifractality in three grammatical structures in English texts – i.e. the Finite Verb Phrases, Noun Phrases, and Head Nouns. In this paper, we present the evidence of multifractality in the distribution of these constructs and discuss how the parameters of multifractality align with the current understanding of register variation in different text types.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. See https://www.google.com/search?q=fractal+shapes&sxsrf=APwXEddSkpkCCpeKz_-gV8sbExHNWxw1Rw:1681097634329&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiSuc7asJ7-AhVzyjgGHZyhA-IQ_AUoAXoECAEQAw&biw=1024&bih=481&dpr=1.88 for visual representations of fractal structures.

2. In this study, we fitted this multifractal analysis onto regular Euclidean shapes and a mono-fractal. The results differed greatly from those of multi-fractals. The results can be made available upon request.

3. With the exception of Children text 1, which may present itself as an outlier due to its extremely low word count.