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Two Regimes in the Frequency of Words and the Origins of Complex Lexicons: Zipf’s Law Revisited∗

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Ferrer i Cancho, Ramon, Solé, Ricard V.·2001·Journal of Quantitative Linguistics

Abstract

Zipf’s law states that the frequency of a word is a power function of its rank. The exponent of the power is usually accepted to be close to (-)1. Great deviations between the predicted and real number of different words of a text, disagreements between the predicted and real exponent of the probability density function and statistics on a big corpus, make evident that word frequency as a function of the rank follows two different exponents, ˜(-)1 for the first regime and ˜(-)2 for the second. The implications of the change in exponents for the metrics of texts and for the origins of complex lexicons are analyzed.

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Metadata

Authors
Ferrer i Cancho, R., & Solé, R. V.
Venue
Journal of Quantitative Linguistics
Published
2001-12
Volume
8
Issue
3
Pages
165-173
ISSN
  • 0929-6174 (ISSN-L)
  • 1744-5035
OpenAlex
W2090618725
Cited by
241
References
0
FWCI
130.41
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
bronze

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Two Regimes in the Frequency of Words and the Origins of Complex Lexicons: Zipf’s Law Revisited∗. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1076/jqul.8.3.165.4101
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Ferrer i Cancho, R., & Solé, R. V. (2001). Two Regimes in the Frequency of Words and the Origins of Complex Lexicons: Zipf’s Law Revisited∗. Journal of Quantitative Linguistics. https://doi.org/10.1076/jqul.8.3.165.4101

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