A Comparison of natural (english) and artificial (esperanto) languages. A Multifractal method based analysis

TL;DR

This study compares natural English texts with their Esperanto translations using multifractal analysis of word length and frequency signals, revealing significant differences linked to language structure and statistical features.

Contribution

It introduces a multifractal analysis approach to distinguish between natural and artificial languages based on statistical properties of texts.

Findings

Esperanto texts show more extreme multifractal values.

Marked differences in f(alpha) curves indicate language-specific statistical features.

Texts modeled as random Cantor sets reveal style-characterizing parameters.

Abstract

We present a comparison of two english texts, written by Lewis Carroll, one (Alice in wonderland) and the other (Through a looking glass), the former translated into esperanto, in order to observe whether natural and artificial languages significantly differ from each other. We construct one dimensional time series like signals using either word lengths or word frequencies. We use the multifractal ideas for sorting out correlations in the writings. In order to check the robustness of the methods we also write the corresponding shuffled texts. We compare characteristic functions and e.g. observe marked differences in the (far from parabolic) f(alpha) curves, differences which we attribute to Tsallis non extensive statistical features in the ''frequency time series'' and ''length time series''. The esperanto text has more extreme vallues. A very rough approximation consists in modeling the texts as a random Cantor set if resulting from a binomial cascade of long and short words (or words and blanks). This leads to parameters characterizing the text style, and most likely in fine the author writings.