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Mechanical translation and Zipf's Law

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2026

Andreas Koutsoudas
Andreas Koutsoudas*
Affiliation:
University of Michigan
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Abstract

[A problem which arises in the course of research on mechanical translation is the prediction of dictionary size. This article investigates the relation between empirical frequency laws and the function V(n)—the expected number of different words in an n-word sample of text. It is found that the probability-law proposed by Joos (1936) yields results which do not check well with experiments, and it is concluded that some modification of it is necessary for the purpose of vocabulary prediction.]

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 33 , Issue 4-Part1: October-December , December 1957, pp. 545 - 552
Copyright
Copyright © 1957 Linguistic Society of America

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References

1 This study was conducted at the University of Michigan under the author's supervision, with funds provided by the Engineering Research Institute. The author is obliged to George Minty for his co-operation in the writing of this paper.

The present article is primarily mathematical, in the sense that the solutions given, though linguistically significant, were obtained by mathematics. All the mathematical derivations underlying the article have been published in University of Michigan Report 2144–147-T, and are available on request.

2 Koutsoudas, Mechanical translation and the problem of multiple meaning, MT journal 3:2 (1956).

3 G. K. Zipf, Human behavior and the principle of least effort (Cambridge, Mass., 1949).

4 M. Joos, review of Zipf's The psycho-biology of language in Lg. 12.196–210 (1936).

5 Zipf's basic premise is that there are certain underlying principles controlling such sociological factors as the use of words, and that these principles are similar over a wide variety of social phenomena.

6 It should be noted that this model was used explicitly by Shannon and Weaver in their development of communication theory, and only implicitly by Joos (1936) in his interpretation of Zipf's Law.

7 Sigma is a mathematical symbol denoting a summation process. It is read, 'the summation of.

8 H. Josselson, The Russian word count (Detroit, 1953).