Exact Methods in the Study of Language and Text: Dedicated to Gabriel Altmann on the Occasion of His 75th Birthday

787 Pages·2007·8.81 MB·

by  Gabriel Altmann, Peter Grzybek, Reinhard Köhler

Luca Pacioli, Jacopo de’Barbari, ca. 1496
Quantitative Linguistics 62
Exact Methods in the Study of
Language and Text
Dedicated to Professor Gabriel Altmann
On the Occasion of His 75th Birthday
Edited by
Peter Grzybek & Reinhard Köhler
Mouton de Gruyter
Berlin – New York

Viribus Quantitatis
The carefully chosen motto of this preface – Viribus quantitatis – might as
well have been an adequate title of this whole book, dedicated to Professor
GabrielAltmannontheoccasionofhis75thbirthday.Afterall,themottohas
more than one semantic implication, which renders it an adequate opening
intothepresentvolume.
First,thetitlereferstotheimportantRenaissancemathematicianLucaPa-
cioli(ca.1445–1514),specificallytohisbookDeviribusquantitatis.1Pacioli,
begantowritethis‘compendium’around1500,butitremainedunpublished
during his lifetime.2 The work is divided into three parts: the first is a col-
lection of mathematical recreational problems; the second is a collection of
geometrical problems and games; the third is a collection of proverbs and
verses.–Inourview,thisbookcanbeinterpretedasanindicationofthedeep
insightresearchersasearlyasatthetimeofLucasPaciolihadintotheonto-
logical,epistemological,heuristic,andmethodologicalaspectsofquantitative
approachestoculturalandnaturalphenomena.
Second, Viribus quantitatis alludes, of course, to the Festschrift entitled
Viribusunitis,devotedtoGabrielAltmannontheoccasionofhis60thbirth-
day. In fact, that motto was chosen as an apt expression of his personal con-
viction that in our times, scientific progress in general, and in linguistics,
specifically, can be achieved only by the intensive co-operation of scholars
from many fields. Viribus quantitatis thus can be understood as the comple-
mentaryadditiontothisgeneralresearchcredo.
Finally,thetitlemaybeunderstoodtodescribetheoverallendeavorofthe
1.Pacioli was personally well-acquainted with celebrities such as Leone Battista Alberti
(famousforhis1435DellaPicturaonthelawsofperspective)andLeonardodaVinci.
Pacioli’s1494workSummadeArithmetica,Geometria,ProportionietProportionalità
gaveasummaryofthemathematicsknownatthetime:itwasoneofthefirsteverprinted
booksonmathematics,anditisconsideredtobeoneofthemostimportantRenaissance
mathematicaltreatises.ThesameholdstrueforPacioli’sDivinaproportione(1509),in-
spiredand,infact,illustratedbyLeonardodaVinci.
2.One of the manuscripts has survived to our day and is held at Bologna University. A
recent edition has been provided by Augusto Marinoni and Maria Garlaschi Peirani
(Milan:EnteRaccoltaVinciana,1997).–Cf.:http://www.uriland.it/matematica/
DeViribus/Presentazione.html
vi PeterGrzybekandReinhardKöhler
present volume, namely, to present a representative book on the occasion of
Gabriel Altmann’s 75 birthday – a pioneer and “global player” in the field
of quantitative linguistics, indeed. As a result, this book represents a good
synopsisoftheeffortstakeninthisspecificdisciplinewithinthebroadfieldof
language and text studies, which is now called quantitative linguistics. And,
infact,itclearlyshows,towhatdegreebothquantificationandco-operation
are necessary to arrive at a theory of text and language, in the strict sense of
theword.
Generally speaking, it is firstand foremost George Kingsley Zipf (1902–
1950) who is considered to be the founder of modern Quantitative Linguis-
tics.Hewasthefirsttosystematicallystudytextandlanguage,usingstatistics
for purely scientific purposes. Since that time, Quantitative Linguistics has,
ofcourse,significantlygrown,andhasbecomeafully-fledgedbranchofgen-
eral linguistics. In fact, it has grown to a degree which makes it difficult to
maintain an overview over the many topics and objects of investigation, the
modelsandmethodsappliedanddeveloped,andthevariousresultspublished
inbooksandinseveraljournals.
Thissituationiswellreflectedbythepresentcollectionoforiginalpapers
from such diverse areas of research as can be found in language and text
studies in general. The book reflects also another fact: Since Zipf, only one
scholar can be said to have inspired and advanced Quantitative Linguistics
to a similar extent – or even more – and who continues doing so: Gabriel
Altmann.
ThereisprobablynoresearcherinthisfieldwhoisnotfamiliarwithAlt-
mann’swork,oratleastwithpartofit,andmanyofthemwouldnotbeableto
dotheirresearchwithoutreferencetohisseminallinguisticandmethodolog-
ical innovations, and his exceptional paradigm. Many a scholar has profited
directlyfromhisadvice,hiscooperationandgeneroushelp.Thepresentvol-
ume is intended to be a modest sign of appreciation and gratitude for his
unlimited support and unselfish co-operativeness which many of us have re-
peatedly experienced over the years. With this perspective, all contributors
to the present volume have realized their wish to express their esteem and
gratitude.
Astheeditorsofthisvolume,wehavetoaddthatallauthorshavekindly
agreedtocontribute,inspiteofthestrictregulationswhichwehadtoset.That
istosaythatfortechnicalreasons,wehadtoaskallauthorstocompletetheir
paperswithinamonth’stime,andtoreducethesizeoftheircontributionstoa
limitednumberofpages.Nevertheless,irrespectiveoftheserigorousrequire-
ViribusQuantitatis vii
ments,81friendsandcolleaguesacceptedtheseconditionsanddelivered66
papersontime.Ourthankgoestoallauthorswhohaveco-operativelyagreed
totheselimitations.
The result of our call is a book which gives an up-to-date picture of cur-
rent research in quantitative linguistics. At the same time, the wide scope
of this book reflects Gabriel Altmann’s wide horizon of interests, his broad
area of research and teaching, his scientific and philosophical concerns, and
his hitherto lifework. It includes papers on fundamental semiotic questions,
semantic, pragmatic and grammatical topics, geolinguistic, typological and
onomatological themes, as well as recent research into methodology. Many
papersincludetheresultsofempiricalfindings,presentingrelevantresultsof
the application of quantitative methods in language and text studies. Several
papers are of a more theoretical character, e.g. the contributions on semiotic
andsystems-theoreticaltopics;othersdealwithpurelymethodologicalprob-
lems, nevertheless showing the applicational significance of their results for
linguistics.Someauthorspresentdeductive-hypotheticalapproachestogether
withtheempiricaltestingoftheirassumptionsandmodels,thusgivingexam-
ples of the integrated deductive-inductive method of scientific work in gen-
eral,andinquantitativelinguisticsinparticular.
In a way, the present book therefore may seem to have a double-faced
appearance: on the one hand, its character resembles that of a yearbook of
quantitative linguistics, on the other hand, it is dedicated as a Festschrift on
theoccasionofajubileetocelebratedjoyfullyandrespectfully.Thisis,there-
fore,theplacetogivesomebiographicalbackgroundandashortcharacteri-
sationofGabrielAltmann’sscientificwork.
GabrielAltmannwasbornonMay24,1931intheSlovakvillageofPoltar,
wherehisfatherworkedasageneralpractitioner.Afterbasicschool,hevis-
ited the grammar school in Lucˇenec and passed his final examinations in
1951. He studied Indonesian linguistics and Japanese philology at Charles
UniversityinPraguefrom1953to1958.AfterhisPhD,hereceivedtheState
doctorateattheCzechoslovakianAcademyofScienceswithhisthesisKvan-
titativneštúdieindonezistiky(QuantitativeStudiesinIndonesianPhilology).
From1960to1968,GabrielAltmannworkedasaresearcherattheOrien-
tal Institute of the Slovak Academy of Sciences in Bratislava. A grant from
theAlexandervonHumboldtFoundationenabledhimtovisittheInstituteof
Phonetics at the University of Cologne from 1968 to 1969. In 1970, he ac-
ceptedthepositionofaresearcherintheproject»Automaticsyntaxanalysis
of German« at the Institut für Deutsche Sprache in Mannheim; then, again
viii PeterGrzybekandReinhardKöhler
supported by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, he was appointed
visitingprofessorforquantitativelinguisticsattheDepartmentofLinguistics
(Ruhr University Bochum). In 1971, he received his German venia legendi,
this time with his Habilitationsschrift Introduction to Quantitative Phonol-
ogy.Sincethattime,heworkedasfullprofessorformathematicallinguistics
atthisinstituteuntilheretiredin1996.
In his early Bochum days, when he started his enterprise to create a new
scientific discipline (before, quantitative methods were used in linguistics
rather sporadically and more or less unsystematically), he encountered vari-
ousproblems.Moreoftenthannot,colleaguesandstudentswouldhaverather
sparse mathematical backgrounds; the specific way of thinking Altmann in-
troduced seemed extremely strange to most contemporary linguists; the de-
mand he imposed on scientific methodology and reflection of methods was
quiteunfamiliarandunusualinthehumanities(andstillcontinuestobeso),
as opposed to the natural sciences; only those of his students seriously in-
terested in his ideas and concepts, and who were ready to invest years of
(additional) hard and concentrated work, had a chance to follow him. Nev-
ertheless, Gabriel Altmann succeeded in gathering a circle of ‘infected’ stu-
dents and scholars within a rather short time period – first in Bochum, later
alsoinothercountries.
Hischarismagrew:moreandmoreinterestedresearcherscameasdemies
or visiting professors from all over the world or started co-operation with
him; again, quite a number of them were supported by the Alexander von
Humboldt Foundation). In 1978, Gabriel Altmann founded, after years of
preparation,thebookseriesQuantitativeLinguistics,withthetwosub-series
Glottometrika and Musikometrika (to be sure, Altmann is not only an inge-
nious linguist and mathematician, but also a gifted musician and analyst).
Within the first ten years, under his supervision thirty volumes by authors
from all five continents were published in this series, which prevailed until
volume60inanalmostunchangedform.
Altmann’s students became researchers and professors and formed, to-
getherwithanincreasingnumberofcolleagues,aninternationalandinterdis-
ciplinaryscientificnetwork.Thedisciplineofquantitativelinguisticsbecame
moreandmoreestablished;in1993,theinternationalJournalofQuantitative
Linguisticswasfounded–again,withGabrielAltmannasanassociateeditor;
when, in 1995, the comprehensive Bibliography of Quantitative Linguistics
was published, this would not have been possible without Altmann’s help;
in 2001, finally, he started another journal on quantitative linguistics, Glot-
ViribusQuantitatis ix
tometrics, which he continues to edit; numerous national and international
research projects were launched and conducted either by himself or on his
initiative, and with his continuing advice. Gabriel Altmann personally made
contacts and helped in establishing contacts with research groups from all
over the world, as for example with the group Statistika recˇi in the former
Soviet Union, with groups in Europe, Japan and Canada. One can, in fact,
conclude that Gabriel Altmann is not only the founder of quantitative lin-
guisticsinGermany,butalsothenestorofmodernquantitativelinguisticsin
general.
Fromtheverybeginning,GabrielAltmann’sscientificworkaimedatform-
ingandconductinglinguisticresearchonthebasisofreflected,soundmethod-
ology,inlinewiththephilosophyofscience.Alsotohismeritisthemodern
demand of quantitative linguistics to overcome the purely descriptive phase
in linguistics, and to pave the way for the next step, laying the foundations
for the explanative phase of linguistic science. Altmann never faded in his
endeavour to explicate fundamental scientific terms such as ‘theory’, ‘law’,
‘hypothesis’or‘explanation’withinalinguisticframework,wherethesecon-
cepts have become blurred and misused over decades. The construction of a
linguistic theory – in the strict sense of the philosophy of science – as the
ultimateaimofthestudyoftextandlanguagehasbeenmadeunderstandable
onlywiththehelpofhiscontinuousefforttoteachanddisseminatenotonly
quantitative linguistics, but also the philosophical background of science in
general.
His astonishing methodological creativity can partly be explained by the
fact that Gabriel Altmann is also an actively researching mathematician and
statistician;thisisevident,amongothers,fromhisnumerouspublicationsin
mathematical journals. One of the major completed projects in this field is
thecomprehensiveThesaurusofunivariatediscreteprobabilitydistributions,
publishedtogetherwithGejzaWimmer,whichcontainsthemathematicalde-
scription of some 750 (!) discrete distributions and families. A comparison
with the most comprehensive list of distributions known so far, which con-
tains ca. 70 distributions, gives an impression of the quantitative progress
characterizingthiswork–moreoversincetheThesaurusisnotasimplelist-
ing, but provides details such as to the interrelations between the distribu-
tions,referencestodirectlyrelevantliterature(inmanycasescorrectingtheir
mathematical mistakes), etc. Quite a number of distributions have been de-
rived and created by Gabriel Altmann himself. The need to do so has to be
seen in the circumstance that the statistical instruments commonly used in
x PeterGrzybekandReinhardKöhler
naturalandsocialscienceshavebeendevelopedovertheyearsondatafrom
andforthepurposesofthesedisciplines.Asaconsequence,linguisticstudies
oftencannotapplythemtotheirspecificobjects.Inmostrespects,linguistic
material has specific statistical properties which exclude the application of
common methods, based on the ‘law of large numbers’ and the validity of
the normal distribution. Hence, in many cases, Altmann had to develop new
statisticalmodelsforhisspecificlinguisticinvestigations.
Gabriel Altmann is an incredibly all-round creative and productive per-
son. In the present volume, we have tried to reflect and to document part of
hismulti-facetedactivities,viz.thescientificfacet,intheformofabibliogra-
phyofhisscientificpublications.Buteventhiswaspossibleonlyinpart,and
wedidnotsucceedtoourfullsatisfaction:notbeingabletoaskthehonored
person himself, for intelligible reasons, we could not gather all relevant in-
formationabouthistranslationsofscientificworks.Togivebutoneexample,
we refer to Juhan Tuldava’s monograph Problems of Quantitative-Systemic
Lexicology, which Gabriel Altmann translated from Russian to German and
publishedin1998,asvolume59oftheseriesQuantitativeLinguistics.
To his closer friends, Gabriel Altmann is known not only as a scientific
genius,butalsoastheauthorofahugecollectionofhumorousshortstories,
whichareaproofofhiscoruscatingsenseofhumor.Itisdeplorablethatwe
are unable to present a bibliographical documentation of this aspect of his
œuvre, the most of which is still unpublished. Only a few friends of Gabriel
Altmann’shavebeenincontactwithhisfacetasaknightofthepen,andonly
afewofhisstorieshavebecomeknowntoalargeraudiencewhentheywere,
interestingly enough, published in some Festschrift (cf. the bibliography of
Gabriel Altmann’s works at the end of this book); Werner Lehfeldt’s contri-
bution to this volume intriguingly integrates this side of Gabriel Altmann’s
workintotheoverallpictureofhispersonality.
Another field Gabriel Altmann made himself familiar with many years
ago is computer programming. This activity was not born by a specific in-
terest in, or enthusiasm for computer science, but resulted from two needs:
first, to find a way to process large amounts of data, and second, to imple-
mentcomplexstatisticalprocedureswhosemanualapplicationwouldbetoo
awkward, time-consuming or even impossible. In this respect, one of his fa-
mous accomplishments is the Altmann-Fitter, a world-wide unique software
packagefortheiterativefittingofca.200discreteprobabilitydistributionsto
empiricaldata,includingparameterestimationandgoodness-of-fittests.This
programisinusebydozensofresearchersinseveraldisciplines.