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POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



inadequate for a civilized language, the possible number of two-, three- 

 and four-letter words, aggregating thousands, is sufficient to supply 

 the majority of words needed for every-day speech. The word-curve 

 of common conversation may therefore be expected to show a maximum 

 ordinate for three or four letters. Words containing five, six or more 

 letters will occur with diminishing frequencies. Few words of more 

 than ten letters will occur. Now this is exactly what takes place. 

 Swift's 'Polite Conversation,' which is a reproduction of the conversa- 

 tion of the uncultured, yields the word-curve shown in Fig. 1. This, 

 after a correction for an excess of seven- and eight-letter words, due 

 to the frequent occurrence of the words ladyship, lordship and certain 

 proper names, is the typical word-curve of extreme light dialogue. 



What now will be the probable variations as we pass from this 

 extreme type of composition to other forms of dramatic prose? As 



conversation becomes more sus- 

 tained the relative frequency of the 

 personal pronoun ' I ' will naturally 

 diminish, the use of prepositional 

 phrases will cause two-letter words 

 to increase, words of six and seven 

 letters will become more numerous 

 at the expense of the frequency of 

 three- and four-letter words. The 

 resulting word-curve must, there- 

 fore, cross the former in two places, 

 once between the abscissas one and 

 two, and again near the abscissa five. If we pass from the heavier 

 forms of dramatic prose to narrative, in which dialogue alternates with 

 description and still heavier composition, the personal pronoun will 

 diminish still more in frequency, two-letter words will continue to 

 increase as will also words of six, seven and more letters, and to com- 

 pensate for this there must be a further decrease in the relative number 

 of three- and four-letter words. This law of change will continue as we 

 pass from fiction to pure description and from the essay style to the op- 

 posite extreme of scientific and philosophic discourse. Here the per- 

 sonal pronoun 'I' will have disappeared, leaving the indefinite article 

 'a' the practically sole representative of one-letter words; with the 

 accumulation of phrases and clauses there is a corresponding accumula- 

 tion of two-letter prepositions, three- and four-letter words will have 

 reached a minimum to make room for longer derivatives, compounds 

 and technical terms. 



Throughout these changes the five-letter word will probably vary 

 least, since the variations on opposite sides of it are in contrary direc- 

 tions. We assume it constant. Taking furthermore Swift's 'Polite 



Pig. 1. 5,000 Word-curves from Swift's 

 ' Polite Conversation.' Corrected curve. 



