statistical linguistics

A branch of LINGUISTICS which studies the application of statistical techniques in linguistic theory and description. The study includes the analysis of frequency and DISTRIBUTION of linguistic UNITS in TEXTS with the aim of identifying the DISTINCTIVE characteristics of the speaker or writer (as in STYLOstatistics); but attempts have also been made to establish general laws concerning the statistical characteristics of languages, such as the relationship between WORD types (e.g. the word up) and word tokens (e.g. the number of instances of the word up in a sample), the relative frequency of ITEMS in different samples, the quantification of such notions as REDUNDANCY in statistical terms, and so on.