George Kingsley Zipf (; January 7, 1902 – September 25, 1950), was an American

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...

and

philologist Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defined as th ...

who studied statistical occurrences in different

language Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of ...

s.. Zipf earned his bachelors, masters, and doctoral degrees from

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

, although he also studied at the

University of Bonn The Rhenish Friedrich Wilhelm University of Bonn (german: Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn) is a public research university located in Bonn, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It was founded in its present form as the ( en, Rhine ...

and the

University of Berlin Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (german: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, abbreviated HU Berlin) is a German public research university in the central borough of Mitte in Berlin. It was established by Frederick William III on the initiative ...

. He was Chairman of the German Department and University Lecturer (meaning he could teach any subject he chose) at

. He worked with

Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of ...

and

demographics Demography () is the statistical study of populations, especially human beings. Demographic analysis examines and measures the dimensions and dynamics of populations; it can cover whole societies or groups defined by criteria such as ed ...

, and much of his effort can explain properties of the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

, distribution of income within nations, and many other collections of data.

Zipf's law

He is the

eponym An eponym is a person, a place, or a thing after whom or which someone or something is, or is believed to be, named. The adjectives which are derived from the word eponym include ''eponymous'' and ''eponymic''. Usage of the word The term ''epon ...

of Zipf's law, which states that while only a few words are used very often, many or most are used rarely, :

P_n \sim 1/n^a

where ''P_n'' is the frequency of a word ranked ''n''^th and the exponent ''a'' is almost 1. This means that the second item occurs approximately 1/2 as often as the first, and the third item 1/3 as often as the first, and so on. Zipf's discovery of this law in 1935 was one of the first academic studies of

word frequency A word list (or ''lexicon'') is a list of a language's lexicon (generally sorted by frequency of occurrence either by levels or as a ranked list) within some given text corpus, serving the purpose of vocabulary acquisition. A lexicon sorted by ...

.. Although he originally intended it as a model for linguistics, Zipf later generalized his law to other disciplines. In particular, he observed that the rank vs. frequency distribution of individual incomes in a unified nation approximates this law, and in his 1941 book, "National Unity and Disunity" he theorized that breaks in this "normal curve of income distribution" portend social pressure for change or

revolution In political science, a revolution (Latin: ''revolutio'', "a turn around") is a fundamental and relatively sudden change in political power and political organization which occurs when the population revolts against the government, typically due ...

Bibliography

* Zipf, George Kingsley (1932): ''Selected Studies of the Principle of Relative Frequency in Language.'' Cambridge (Mass.). * (1935): ''The Psycho-Biology of Language.'' Cambridge (

Max Bunker Max Bunker, pen name of Luciano Massimiliano Secchi (born 24 August 1939), is an Italian comic book writer, and publisher, best known as the co-author of '' Alan Ford''. Bunker's career started in 1960 when he co-founded, together with his brothe ...

). * (1941): ''National unity and disunity'' * (1946): ''The P1 P2/D Hypothesis: On the Intercity Movement of Persons.'' American Sociological Review, vol. 11, Dec, pp. 677 * (1949): ''Human behavior and the principle of least effort''

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Zipf, George Kingsley 1902 births 1950 deaths American philologists American statisticians Harvard College alumni Harvard University faculty Harvard University Department of German faculty Professors of German in the United States Quantitative linguistics Bibliometricians American people of German descent 20th-century American mathematicians 20th-century philologists

Zipf's law

See also

Bibliography

References