Abstract
A corpus of literary works authored by Sir Terry Pratchett is analyzed from the perspective of linguistic variables which from the literature on natural ageing, one might expect to show effects of gradual change and periods without change. Aspects of lexical complexity exhibit trends that diverge from patterns associated healthy ageing. Background: Past study of linguistic healthy ageing has analyzed corpora of individual professional writers over time and cross-sectional corpora constructed with writing samples from individuals in distinct age groups. Among other effects, negative linear correlations have been found between the use of both first person singular and first person plural pronouns and age and between past-tense verb forms and age; positive linear correlations have been found between cognitive complexity features and age. Main goal: This study seeks to contribute to understanding of whether Alzheimer’s disease is accompanied by the same, accelerated or distinct patterns of change in linguistic features associated with healthy ageing. Method: A corpus of works published by Sir Terry Pratchett is analyzed with respect to pronoun use and linguistic signals of cognitive complexity, such as embedding words and lexical variety, testing correlations between those quantities and author age. Results: The Pratchett corpus exhibits effects in the opposite direction of those associated with healthy ageing for: first person pronoun use and long words. Lexical variety strongly diminishes over the corpus. Conclusions: Linguistic data produced by individuals diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease appears to contain signals of the fact, when analyzed post hoc. This suggests further work to identify inflection points and to study further features that may be indicative as the linguistic data is produced.
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Notes
- 1.
It must be acknowledged, as a helpful reviewer has noted, that this paper is included in a volume that has substantial focus on neural network research and engineering oriented topics, and for many who will encounter this volume, these visualizations are superfluous; however, volumes in this series also have a substantially wider audience, including some for whom these visualizations may serve as helpful reminders.
- 2.
This was done using a linux utility: https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Carl.Vogel/WIRN2019/Vogel-WIRN2019-appendix.pdf.
- 3.
No distinction between uppercase and lowercase uses of words is made.
- 4.
A file containing the appendices to this work is available: http://www.scss.tcd.ie/Carl.Vogel/WIRN2019/Vogel-WIRN2019-appendix.pdf.
- 5.
Ibid.
- 6.
In the sense that a Shapiro test of normality does not allow one to reject the null hypothesis that the ratio follows a normal distribution.
- 7.
In Table 1 the Pearson correlation coefficient is reported.
- 8.
Removing the predicate of dialogue narration, “asked”, the relative frequency of question embedding predicates still shows a linear positive correlation with age (\(0.42, p<0.02\)).
- 9.
It is tempting to speculate that since questioning robustly signals seeking answers to what one does not know, and since knowing what one does not know is a component of wisdom, then increasing use of question embedding with age is a linguistic signal of increasing wisdom.
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Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Dr. Jennifer Edmond for supplying access to the Sir Terry Pratchett literary corpus. This research is supported by Science Foundation Ireland (Grants 12/CE/I2267 and 13/RC/2106) through the CNGL Programme and the ADAPT Centre.
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Vogel, C. (2021). Linguistic Evidence of Ageing in the Pratchett Canon. In: Esposito, A., Faundez-Zanuy, M., Morabito, F., Pasero, E. (eds) Progresses in Artificial Intelligence and Neural Systems. Smart Innovation, Systems and Technologies, vol 184. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5093-5_45
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