Fractal Analysis of Poe's Raven, II*

Abstract

The present article is a natural continuation of our investigation in an earlier paper with the same title (2011, distinguished here by number II). The fractal analysis of Poe's Raven concerns here the original text together with its thirty-three translations. The appropriate segmentation of the poem on each linguistic level is examined from the fractal point of view. The related language fractals are assigned by a degree of semanticity. Thus, the (non)suitability of a quantitative exploration of all texts is discussed in a comparative way.

Acknowledgements

The first author was supported by the project A-Math-Net Applied Mathematics Knowledge Transfer Network No CZ.1.07/2.4.00/17.0100.

Notes

¹The terminology of constructs and constituents is used in relation to the directly neighbouring linguistic levels and is also brought to bear the roles in the Menzerath-Altmann law, which conveys the nature of the relationship between constructs and constituents (cf., for example, Altmann, 1980; Hřebíček, 1997).

²The truncated formula of the Menzerath-Altmann law (MAL) is y = A.x ^−b, whereas the complete formula of MAL is stated as y = A.x ^−b.e^cx (cf. Altmann, 1980).

³ In the parentheses, we present the outputs where at least one of the parameters b_i , i = 1, 2, 3 is negative (these are indicated in italics), thus such a sample text cannot be regarded a language fractal. The values of the parameters b_i for eachi = 1, 2, 3 earned by means of the approach III can be compared with the ones mined by means of the approach I and in a few cases by the approach II in Andres and Benešová (2011).

⁴The language fractals of the 2nd and 3rd order are those language fractals where two or all of the parameters b ₁, b ₂, b ₃ are approximately equal, as was introduced in Andres (2010).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Martina Benešová

Dedicated to Reinhard Köhler on the occasion of his 60th birthday