| 释义 |
Zipf|zɪpf|
The name of George Kingsley Zipf (1902–50), American linguist, used in the possessive in Zipf's law, a principle in Psycholinguistics (see quots.).
1960É. Delavenay Introd. Machine Transl. v. 68 To lend support to arguments based on Zipf's law, Yngve produced evidence likely to convince unbelievers. 1967M. Schlauch Language & Study of Languages Today vii. 143 Some three decades ago, G. K. Zipf undertook to investigate what relation, if any, exists between the length of words and their frequency of occurrence in sample languages chosen for investigation. He came to the conclusion that the length of a word tends to decrease as its relative frequency of use increases... The formula..has come to be known as ‘Zipf's Law’, often quoted if also sometimes questioned. 1971Jrnl. General Psychol. Oct. 297 Zipf's law predicts an inverse ratio in the rank order distribution of varieties such that a minimal number of varieties covers a maximal number of responses and a maximal number of varieties covers a minimal number of responses. 1980Verbatim Spring 9/2 A psycholinguist will say that this phenomenon is working proof of Zipf's Law, which states loosely that one can generally determine the relative age of a particular word or phrase by how short it has become. |