Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Probability distributions of grapheme frequencies in Irish and Manx
AU - Wilson, Andrew
PY - 2013/7
Y1 - 2013/7
N2 - Drawing on the work of Grzybek and colleagues on Slavic and German, this study tests three hypotheses regarding the probability distribution of grapheme frequencies in Irish and Manx. First, is the 1-displaced negative hypergeometric distribution an appropriate theoretical distribution for grapheme frequencies in these languages? Second, does the language with the larger grapheme inventory exhibit larger values of the parameter K in this distribution? Third, are the parameters K and M of the 1-displaced negative hypergeometric distribution positively related in both languages? An analysis of 32 parallel texts (16 Irish + 16 Manx) suggests that the 1-displaced negative hypergeometric distribution is an appropriate model for both languages and that the parameters K and M are positively related. However, the analysis does not support the hypothesis that the language with the larger grapheme inventory also has higher values of K. Further work needs to clarify how far this latter finding extends beyond this sample of Irish and Manx.
AB - Drawing on the work of Grzybek and colleagues on Slavic and German, this study tests three hypotheses regarding the probability distribution of grapheme frequencies in Irish and Manx. First, is the 1-displaced negative hypergeometric distribution an appropriate theoretical distribution for grapheme frequencies in these languages? Second, does the language with the larger grapheme inventory exhibit larger values of the parameter K in this distribution? Third, are the parameters K and M of the 1-displaced negative hypergeometric distribution positively related in both languages? An analysis of 32 parallel texts (16 Irish + 16 Manx) suggests that the 1-displaced negative hypergeometric distribution is an appropriate model for both languages and that the parameters K and M are positively related. However, the analysis does not support the hypothesis that the language with the larger grapheme inventory also has higher values of K. Further work needs to clarify how far this latter finding extends beyond this sample of Irish and Manx.
KW - Probability distributions
KW - Irish
KW - Manx
KW - Graphemes
KW - Writing systems
KW - Alphabets
KW - Celtic
U2 - 10.1080/09296174.2013.799919
DO - 10.1080/09296174.2013.799919
M3 - Journal article
VL - 20
SP - 169
EP - 177
JO - Journal of Quantitative Linguistics
JF - Journal of Quantitative Linguistics
SN - 0929-6174
IS - 3
ER -