Statistical Mechanical Approach to Human Language

Details Statistical Mechanical Approach to Human Language Statistical Mechanical Approach to Human Language

2005-10-04

arxiv.org/abs/physics/0510019v1

Physics

Physics and Society

20 pages,4 figures, Accepted in Physica A

Scientific paper

10.1016/j.physa.2005.10.039

We use the formulation of equilibrium statistical mechanics in order to study some important characteristics of language. Using a simple expression for the Hamiltonian of a language system, which is directly implied by the Zipf law, we are able to explain several characteristic features of human language that seem completely unrelated, such as the universality of the Zipf exponent, the vocabulary size of children, the reduced communication abilities of people suffering from schizophrenia, etc. While several explanations are necessarily only qualitative at this stage, we have, nevertheless, been able to derive a formula for the vocabulary size of children as a function of age, which agrees rather well with experimental data.

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