Word Length Analysis of Jane Austen's Letters

This paper deals with word length in twenty of Jane Austen's letters and is part of a research project performed in Göttingen. Word length in English has so far only been studied in the context of contemporary texts (Hasse & Weinbrenner, 1995; Riedemann, 1994) and in the English dictionary (Rothschild, 1986). It has been ascertained that word length in texts abides by a law having the form of the mixed Poisson distribution -an assumption which in a language like English can easily be justified. However, in special texts other regularities can arise. Individual or genre-like factors can induce a systematic deviation in one or more frequency classes. We say that the phenomenon is on the way to another attractor. The first remedy in such cases is a local modification of the given frequency classes; the last remedy is the search for another model. THE DATA Letters were examined because it can be assumed that they are written down without interruption, and hence revised versions or the conscious use of stylistic means are the exception. The assumed natural rhythm governing word length in writing is thus believed to have remained mostly uninfluenced and constant. The length of the selected letters is between 126 and 494 words. They date from 1796 to 1817 and are partly businesslike and partly private. The letters to Jane Austen's sister Cassandra above all are written in an 'informal' style. In general, however, the letters are on a high stylistic level, which is not only characteristic of the use of language at that time, but also a main feature of Jane Austen's personal style. Thus contractions such as don't, can't, wouldn 't etc. do not occur. word depends on the number of vowels or diphthongs. Diphthongs and triphthongs can also be differentiated, both of these would count as one syllable. This paper only deals with diphthongs. The number of syllables of abbreviations is counted according to its fully spoken form. Thus addresses and titles such as 'Mrs', 'Mr', 'Md' and 'Capt' consist of two syllables; 'Lieut' consists of three syllables. The same holds for figures and for the abbreviations of months. MS is the common short form for 'Manuscript'; 'comps' (complements), 'G.Mama' (Grandmama), 'morn' (morning), 'c ' (could), 'w ' (would) or 'rec' (received) seem to be the writer's idiosyncratic abbreviations. In all cases length is determined by the spoken form. The analysis is based on the 'received pronunciation' of British English. Only the running text without address, date, or place has been considered. ANALYSING THE DATA General Criteria Length is determined by the number of syllables in each word. "Word" is defined as an orthographic unit. The number of syllables in a Findings As ascertained by the software tool 'AltmannFitter' (1994) the best model was found to be the positive Singh-Poisson distribution (= inflated zero truncated Poisson distribution), which has the following formula: *Address correspondence to: J. Frischen, Brüder-Grimm-Allee 2, 37075 Göttingen, Germany. D ow nl oa de d by [ K or ea U ni ve rs ity ] at 0 4: 53 1 0 Ja nu ar y 20 15 WORD LENGTH JANE AUSTEN'S LETTERS 81 aae' Table 3. Letter 16, Austen, 1798, to Cassandra Austen. fx NPx aae~ x\(l-e-)' x=2,3,... Distributions modified in this way indicate that the author tends to leave the basic model (in the case of English, the Poisson distribution) by local modification of the shortest class (here x 188 57 15 4 1 187.79 56.53 16.38 3.561 0.74J