My own purpose is not to do with religious texts, but it seems like the example is getting in the way of the subject. There's no reason why statistical analysis shouldn't work on textual analysis. Whether it does, and which method is best, and which language is best to do it in, these are all empirical questions to be settled by studies. I haven't had time to do much work on the problem yet, but it seems at first glance as if LC is a reasonable choice. Its going to be a tradeoff between speed and statistics libraries ready made, which you would get in R, and the string manipulation and rapid development that you get with LC.
I'm quite skeptical about the idea that when we write for different purposes, we vary the parameters which are used for textual analysis. One of the key characteristics of a native speaker is the ability to create an infinite number of grammatically correct different expressions. This doesn't happen randomly, its rule based, and its a bit like the gait when walking, it is a quite deep feature of our use of language. Its a reasonable hypothesis that even when writing for different purposes and audiences, our writing will be generated in accordance with the same rules. But its not a matter for belief, this is an empirical question. One could take, for instance Bertrand Russell, who wrote for specialist and lay readers. There are novelists - Graham Greene wrote what he called 'entertainments' as well as his serious novels. Some UK ministers have written polemical pieces and also fiction. Academics often write for learned journals and also popularize. So it would be quite easy to test. First however, I shall try to master the basic tools. -- View this message in context: http://runtime-revolution.278305.n4.nabble.com/Re-Text-analysis-and-author-anyone-done-it-tp3636729p3641646.html Sent from the Revolution - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com. _______________________________________________ use-livecode mailing list use-livecode@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode
