Zipf s law of abbreviation and the principle of least effort. Human behavior and the principle of least effort pdf free. These principles seem to be common to all languages. Download it once and read it on your kindle device, pc, phones or tablets. The principle of least effort is another possible explanation. Least effort and the origins of scaling in human language. Pdf human behaviour and the principle of least effort. Ihuman behavior and the principle of least effort addisonwesley, 1949 cambridge, ma3 ibonus. The principle of least effort is analogous to the path of least resistance. It is closely related to many other similar principles. Zipfs law of abbreviation and the principle of least.
The principle of least effort is known as a deterministic description of human behavior. Exact facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with optical recognition software. While the observation that frequent words tend to be short. Zipf s purpose is to establish the principle of least effort as the primary principle that governs our entire individual and. The principle of least effort within the hierarchy of. Over simplifying a little, the word the is about twice as frequent as the word of. Zipfs law and the frequency of characters or words of oracles arxiv. Zipfs law simple english wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The concept of the principle of least effort has been cited mainly by researchers of information behavior and served to support the citing authors claims. A note on pragmatic principles of least effort robyn carston abstract. Unlimited viewing of the articlechapter pdf and any associated supplements and figures. Since the principle is also functional, the thesis adopts a functional theory of language as its theoretical framework, i. Influence of human behavior and the principle of least. The emergence of a complex language is one of the fundamental events of human evolution, and several remarkable features suggest the presence of fundamental principles of organization.
The principle of least effort is a broad theory that covers diverse fields from evolutionary biology. The law is named after the american linguist george kingsley zipf who popularized it zzipf sought to explain it zipf, though he did not claim to have originated it. We then discuss the correlation between three widely considered distributions. The statistical tradeoff between word order and word. The author of the human behavior and the principle of least effort and the psychobiology of language is bestknown for zipf s law, the observation that the frequency of a word is inversely proportional to the rank of its frequency. Description this is the full set of experimental data described in the paper. By contrast, the concept of zipf s law received the most attention from bibliometrics research and was used mainly for comparisons with other informetrics laws or research results. Zipfs law of abbreviation and the principle of least effort citation for published version. The principle of least action in geometry and dynamics. Zipf postulated a principle of least effort as the motivation for his empirical laws, and indeed this matches well with the 8020 laws often associated with the pareto distribution. Language users optimise a miniature lexicon for efficient communication, cognition, vol. The hypothesis of zipf concerning a universal principle of least effort, manifested itself in zipf s law and was modeled by ferrer i cancho and sole into a signalobject reference matrix, giving rise to the idea that it may be possible to identify the elements in music that elicit emotional responses in us. He pointed out that it could explain the pattern of word frequencies, but he did not give a rigorous proof of its validity. He theorized that the distribution of word use was due to the tendency to communicate efficiently with least effort and this theory is known as zipf s law.
The principle of least effort applies not only in the library context, but also to any informationseeking activity. The principle of least effort is a broad theory that covers diverse fields from evolutionary biology to webpage design. The best known is the socalled zipf s law, which states that the frequency of a word decays as a universal power law. Rating is available when the video has been rented. Zipf s concept of zipf s law has had the largest influence. What links here related changes upload file special pages permanent link. Zipfs purpose is to establish the principle of least effort as the primary principle that governs our entire individual and collective behavior of all sorts, includ. Click download or read online button to get human behavior and the principle of least effort book now. The principle is simple all effort should be least and universal it governs the totality of human behavior. Zipf s law of abbreviation and the principle of least effort citation for published version. I encoding is simple but decoding is hard i zipf uses the analogy of tools. The same relationship occurs in many other rankings unrelated to language, such as the population ranks of cities in various countries, corporation sizes, income rankings, ranks of number of people watching the same tv channel, 5 and so on. Information seeking theories and models 36,219 views.
Also known as zipf s law, zipf s principle of least effort, and the path of least. Zipf s 1949 book has a growing influence on lis research. Human behavior and the principle of least effort by george. The thesis is an investigation of the principle of least effort zipf 1949 1972. Principle of least effort is the second most cited concept. Language users optimise a miniature lexicon for efficient communication 2017, by jasmeen kanwal, kenny smith, jennifer culbertson, and simon kirby, published in cognition. Zipf believed it drove much of human behavior and hypothesized that as language developed in our species, speakers naturally preferred drawing. This work provides a mathematical tool to derive zipf pareto laws directly from the idea that living systems always follow the rule of least effort in their. Zipf s 1949 book focusing on principle of least effort is not cited in lis articles until 1958. Zipf referred to the lexical tradeoff as the principle of least effort. The tendency for life and things to follow the path of least resistance. Zip f distribution is related to the zeta distribution, but is.
Influence of human behaviour and the principle of least. Deriving zipf law principle of least effort vs maximum efficiency. Thereafter, the speaker tends to choose the most ambiguous words, which is opposed to the least effort for the hearer. This study investigated the influence of the principle of least effort ple introduced by zipf in his 1949 work, human behavior and the principle of least effort. The principle of least effort ple was proposed in 1949 by harvard linguist george kingsley zipf in human behavior and the principle of least effort see below. Influence of human behavior and the principle of least effort on. It postulates that animals, people, and even welldesigned machines will naturally choose the path of least resistance or effort. This site is like a library, use search box in the widget to get ebook that you want. As the principle of least effort is proposed by zipf, it is also called zipfs law. George kingsley zipf who wrote human behaviour and the principle of least effort. Using data on the entire population of taxpaying firms in the united states, i show here that the zipf distribution characterizes firm sizes. Zipf hypothesised that this universal design feature arises as a result of individuals optimising formmeaning mappings under competing pressures to communicate accurately but also efficientlyhis famous principle of least effort.
Zipfs immediate area of interest was the statistical study of the frequency of word use, but his principle has also been applied in linguistics to such topics as lexical diffusion, language acquisition, and conversation analysis. The principle of least effort is the theory that the one single primary principle in any human action, including verbal communication, is the expenditure of the least amount of effort to accomplish a task. Deriving zipf law principle of least effort vs maximum. Analyses of firm sizes have historically used data that included limited samples of small firms, data typically described by lognormal distributions.
An introduction to human ecology kindle edition by zipf, george kingsley. Human behavior and the principle of least effort by zipf, george kingsley. Pdf this work provides a mathematical tool to derive zipf pareto laws directly from the idea that living systems always follow the rule of least. Human behavior and the principle of least effort anthrosource. Pdf the principle of least effort and zipf distribution. Information behavior researchers focus on concepts relating to principle of least effort. The principle was studied by linguist george kingsley zipf, author of this classic treatment of the subject. Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading human behavior and the principle of least effort. The r principle is taken to correspond with zipf s speakers economy, that is, a force pressing in the direction of a single word or sound that would express all possible meanings, thereby sparing the speaker the mental effort that is involved in.
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