Complex Networks of Words in Fables

TL;DR

This study applies complex network theory to Ukrainian fables, analyzing word frequency and network properties, revealing that language networks are scale-free, small-world, and highly correlated, which may inform language evolution models.

Contribution

It provides a comparative analysis of different language network representations and demonstrates their consistent scale-free, small-world properties in Ukrainian texts.

Findings

Language networks are scale-free and small-world.

Different network representations yield similar properties.

Text size is sufficient for statistical analysis.

Abstract

In this chapter we give an overview of the application of complex network theory to quantify some properties of language. Our study is based on two fables in Ukrainian, Mykyta the Fox and Abu-Kasym's slippers. It consists of two parts: the analysis of frequency-rank distributions of words and the application of complex-network theory. The first part shows that the text sizes are sufficiently large to observe statistical properties. This supports their selection for the analysis of typical properties of the language networks in the second part of the chapter. In describing language as a complex network, while words are usually associated with nodes, there is more variability in the choice of links and different representations result in different networks. Here, we examine a number of such representations of the language network and perform a comparative analysis of their characteristics. Our results suggest that, irrespective of link representation, the Ukrainian language network used in the selected fables is a strongly correlated, scale-free, small world. We discuss how such empirical approaches may help form a useful basis for a theoretical description of language evolution and how they may be used in analyses of other textual narratives.