Brian M. Scott wrote:
> At 5:03:36 PM on Friday, September 30, 2005, Grzegorz
> Jagodzinski wrote:
>
>> The Zipf's law says that long words must be shortened
>> (irregularily) if they are used with enough frequency.
>
> 'Zipf's law' normally refers to Zipf's empirical observation
> that the frequency of the n-th most common word in a text is
> proportional to 1/n,
Really?
"George K. Zipf is famous for his law of abbreviations"
and further:
"Footnote: Not necessarily proportionate; possibly some non-linear
mathematical function."
And so, if somebody understand Zipf's law the way you describe, it means
that his/her interpretation is incorrect.
> In any case, both of these are empirical
> descriptions, so neither can say that anything *must*
> happen.
> Brian
All laws are descriptive, contrary to theories whose aim is to answer the
question "why". However, laws also *require* things to happen so-and-so, in
order to satisfy what the laws say. As Newton's law requires apples to fall
onto the ground, so Zipf's law requires frequent words to be shortened (if
they are too long). Both things *must* happen. The meaning of "must" is the
same in both situations (and may be different than in other instances).
Grzegorz J.
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