Investigation of Zipf's 'law-of-meaning' on Turkish corpora

Abstract

Zipf's law-of-meaning states that the number of meanings of a word is related to its frequency. Words that are seen more frequently tend to have more meanings than the ones that are seen less frequently. This law, like the other Zipfian laws is consistent with the principal of least effort. In this study we hope to establish a basis for the number of meanings a word can attain in Turkish with respect to its frequency in a document. Zipfian parameters are derived from two Turkish corpora on which the meanings are labeled. It is hoped that the results of this study contributes in resolving ambiguity of word senses in Turkish.