• DocumentCode
    3635226
  • Title

    Inflection system of a language as a complex network

  • Author

    Henryk Fukś

  • Author_Institution
    Department of Mathematics, Brock University, St. Catharines, ON, Canada
  • fYear
    2009
  • Firstpage
    491
  • Lastpage
    496
  • Abstract
    We investigate inflection structure of a synthetic language using Latin as an example. We construct a bipartite graph in which one group of vertices correspond to dictionary headwords and the other group to inflected forms encountered in a given text. Each inflected form is connected to its corresponding headword, which in some cases in non-unique. The resulting sparse graph decomposes into a large number of connected components, to be called word groups. We then show how the concept of the word group can be used to construct coverage curves of selected Latin texts. We also investigate a version of the inflection graph in which all theoretically possible inflected forms are included. Distribution of sizes of connected components of this graphs resembles cluster distribution in a lattice percolation near the critical point.
  • Keywords
    "Complex networks","Natural languages","Vocabulary","Dictionaries","Mathematics","Bipartite graph","Lattices","Humans","Thesauri","Databases"
  • Publisher
    ieee
  • Conference_Titel
    Science and Technology for Humanity (TIC-STH), 2009 IEEE Toronto International Conference
  • Print_ISBN
    978-1-4244-3877-8
  • Type

    conf

  • DOI
    10.1109/TIC-STH.2009.5444449
  • Filename
    5444449