Diversity of vocabulary and homogeneity of literary style

Abstract

To help settle the debate around the authorship of Tirant lo Blanc, we analyse the evolution of the diversity of the vocabulary used in that book, as measured through eight different diversity indices. The exploratory analysis reveals a clear single shift in diversity, that is estimated through change-point techniques to be in chapter 382, and might indicate the existence of one main author writing about four fifths of the book, and of a second author finishing the last one fifth of the book. Before chapter 382, the language is richer and more diverse than after it.

Keywords:

• Change-point analysis
• inverse Gaussian–Poisson mixture
• Sichel distribution
• Simpson index
• stylometry

Acknowledgements

This work was funded in part by Grant No. BFM2001–2327 of the Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnologia of Spain. The authors wish to thank Ignasi Serra and Emma Arcos, for the computation of [bcirc] and ĉ, A. Espadaler, L. Badia and J. Guia for their subject matter advise, and J. Giron and X. Puig for their comments on the manuscript.