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Phys. Rev. Lett. 88, 048702 (2002) [4 pages]

Language Trees and Zipping

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Dario Benedetto1,*, Emanuele Caglioti1,†, and Vittorio Loreto2,3,‡
1“La Sapienza” University, Mathematics Department, Piazzale Aldo Moro 5, 00185 Rome, Italy
2“La Sapienza” University, Physics Department, Piazzale Aldo Moro 5, 00185 Rome, Italy
3INFM, Center for Statistical Mechanics and Complexity, Rome, Italy

Received 29 August 2001; revised 13 September 2001; published 8 January 2002

In this Letter we present a very general method for extracting information from a generic string of characters, e.g., a text, a DNA sequence, or a time series. Based on data-compression techniques, its key point is the computation of a suitable measure of the remoteness of two bodies of knowledge. We present the implementation of the method to linguistic motivated problems, featuring highly accurate results for language recognition, authorship attribution, and language classification.

© 2002 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.88.048702
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevLett.88.048702
PACS:
89.70.+c, 01.20.+x, 05.20.-y, 05.45.Tp

*Electronic address: benedetto@mat.uniroma1.it

†Electronic address: caglioti@mat.uniroma1.it

‡Electronic address: loreto@roma1.infn.it

See Also

Comment: Dmitry V. Khmelev and William J. Teahan, Comment on “Language Trees and Zipping”, Phys. Rev. Lett. 90, 089803 (2003).

Reply: Dario Benedetto, Emanuele Caglioti, and Vittorio Loreto, Benedetto, Caglioti, and Loreto Reply:, Phys. Rev. Lett. 90, 089804 (2003).

 
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