從紅樓夢論齊普夫律中文之適用性

Zipf Law has two fundamental characteristics : (1) the product of the frequency of a word's appearance in a text and its relative ranking is a constant. It equals to 0.1 of the total number of words of the text; (2) the slope of its curve equals to -1. Many studies have proven that Zipf Law does fit English pattern. Using an incomplete statistical data, Zipf concluded that the law is also applicable to Chinese. This study uses Chapter Forty of the Dream of the Red Chamber as a sample to test whether the law is truly applicable to Chinese language. Based on the findings of this study, it is found that Zipf Law is not applicable to Chinese language.