Word-Length Distribution in Inuktitut Narratives: Empirical and Theoretical Findings

Tliis paper deals wilh ihe dislribution of word length in short native mylliological and hisuirieal Eskimo narrative texls. To my knowledge. no Eskimo-Aletil data have been ihe object of quantitative linguistie Investigation so t'ar. Dtte Io tlie strong linguistie and slylixlic honiogcncily of Ihe examined texts u was assumed tlial tltese texts tun be subsumed under a single law of Word lengih dislribution. il word lenglh distribulion ol a tcxi is eonsidered as a funclimi of eerlain of its properties. such as aulhor. language. and genre. So far. word lengih dislribution in texts of a wide variely of languages and genres has hecn demonstraled lo follow distribulions of ihe eompound Poisson lamily of diserele probabilily dislribulions. In view ol ihe morphological idiosynerasies of ihe Eskimo language in general, wliieli are responsihle for an unusually high mean word lenglli of aboul 4.5 lo 5.2 syllubles per word in Ihe texts, it is inleresting io sec whether Eskimo texts show a signifieantly different behaviour with respeel lo word length. The resuhs demonstrate ihm ihe Eskimo data cmployed in this study ean be filtcd well by die llyperpoisson dislribution, Two lurlher discrete probabilily distribulions will be dedueed from eerlain morphohifiy-bused assumptions about Eskimo. Il lurns otil Ihat rnost of die Eskimo data ean be filled by these two distribulions. The quesdon lo whal extern diese resulls point lo a more grammar-oriented iheory of word length is also diseussed.