Gabriel Altmann Boeken

The volume is particularly addressed to the human sciences. It aims to show that these sciences could greatly profit from reframing their problems in the moved spirit of systems theory. The individual sections 1, general systems; 2, semiotics; 3, knowledge and cognition; 4, culture; 5, music; 6, language; 7, literature - 29 authors - among whom one finds e.g. M. Bunge, H. Haken, G. Klit, E. Laszlo, B. Nicolescmu, F. Wuketitis etc - deal with systems in general, they show the application of systems concepts and ideas in individual human sciences, they advance a number of models and hypotheses and offer concrete examples. The volume yields an extensive survey of the history of systems thinking in different sciences and is an excellent state of the art for all pertinent disciplines. It covers relevant concepts as self-organization, evolution, chaos, synergetics, complexity, information, law, theory, cognition, and model building. This collection of essays bears testimony to the mutual penetration and cross-fertilization of all sciences. It is an pioneering enterprise dispensing with the idea of priority of the natural sciences over the human sciences. It closes our century and comes up with a research programme for the next one.

In this book we try to perform a simplification concerning classes of linguistic objects. We have collected some of the available published literature ? it is enormous ? and let the reader continue fitting the simple function we propose. The approach does not mean that all the enedeavours by Zipf, Mandelbrot, etc. are not correct. On the contrary, we merely bring to them a simple differential equation which is easier to interpret than the more complex ones, but all of them belong to the same unified theory. Neither does it mean that we have discovered more truth. Truth is not concealed behind formulae. They merely help us to capture the reality and to draw mechanically consequences using the rules of mathematics. But none of our models is part of the reality.

The present volume presents objective methods to detect and analyse various forms of repetitions. Repetition of textual elements is more than a superficial phenomenon. It may even be considered as constitutive for units and relations in a text: on a primary level when no other way exists to establish a unit – as in a musical composition (a motif can be recognised as such only after at least one repetition) – and on a secondary, artistic level, where repetition is a consequence of the transfer of the equivalence principle from the paradigmatic axis to the syntagmatic one as showed by R. Jakobson. The analysis of repetitive elements and structures in texts with objective mathematical means can serve several practical and theoretical purposes, among them: Characterisation of texts by means of parameters (measures, indicators) as taken from established mathematical statistics or specifically constructed ones in individual cases. Comparison of texts on the basis of their quantitative characteristics and classification of the texts by the results. Research for the laws of text, which control the mechanisms connected to text creation. As a remote aim, the construction of a theory of text consisting of a system of text laws. The final attempt of every possible quantitative text analysis is the construction of a text theory. The book illustrates this on examples of such laws and corresponding empirical tests.

This volume presents 12 papers on a new approach to the analysis of writing systems. For the first time, quantitative methods are introduced into this area of research in a systematic way. The individual contributions give an overview about quantitative properties of symbols and of writing systems, introduce methods of analysis, study individual writing systems as used for different languages, set up an explanatory model of phenomena connected to script development/evolution, and give a perspective to a general theory of writing systems.

V knize jsou prezentovány metody, které lze použít pro kvantitativní analýzy textů; konkrétně jde o metody měření a) tematické koncentrace textu, b) slovní­ho bohatství textu, c) aktivity textu, d) délky slova a jejího vztahu k délce verše (viz Menzerathův zákon) a e) eufonie. V rámci každé metody je také představen způsob, jak statisticky testovat rozdíly jednotlivými texty vzhledem k měřeným vlastnostem. Jednotlivé metodologické postupy jsou detailně popsány a tento popis je doplněn ilustrativním příkladem analýzy konkrétního textu. Kniha je uvedena kapitolou shrnující základní teoretická a metodologická východiska současné kvantitativní lingvistiky, a nabízí tak nejen prezentaci jednotlivých postupů, ale i jejich teoretického pozadí.