Abstract
It is one thing to calculate what is mathematically possible in the way of combination of elementary linguistic units, and another to account for the actual number of combinations of such units into longer ones. The two numbers are by no means identical, and it is this difference which appears to be of the greatest importance for our understanding of language structure.
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© 1966 Springer-Verlag Berlin · Heidelberg
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Herdan, G. (1966). Optimality of the word-length distribution. In: The Advanced Theory of Language as Choice and Chance. Kommunikation und Kybernetik in Einzeldarstellungen, vol 4. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-88388-0_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-88388-0_10
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-88390-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-88388-0
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