Title :
Inflection system of a language as a complex network
Author_Institution :
Department of Mathematics, Brock University, St. Catharines, ON, Canada
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"
Conference_Titel :
Science and Technology for Humanity (TIC-STH), 2009 IEEE Toronto International Conference
Print_ISBN :
978-1-4244-3877-8
DOI :
10.1109/TIC-STH.2009.5444449