Word length analysis of Jane Austen's letters

Abstract

This paper deals with word length in twenty of Jane Austen's letters and is part of a research project performed in Göttingen. Word length in English has so far only been studied in the context of contemporary texts (Hasse & Weinbrenner, 1995; Riedemann, 1994) and in the English dictionary (Rothschild, 1986). It has been ascertained that word length in texts abides by a law having the form of the mixed Poisson distribution ‐an assumption which in a language like English can easily be justified. However, in special texts other regularities can arise. Individual or genre‐like factors can induce a systematic deviation in one or more frequency classes. We say that the phenomenon is on the way to another attractor. The first remedy in such cases is a local modification of the given frequency classes; the last remedy is the search for another model.

Notes

Address correspondence to: J. Frischen, Brüder‐Grimm‐Allee 2, 37075 Göttingen, Germany.