Principle of Least Effort and Sentence Length in Public Speaking

Natalia L Tsizhmovska; Leonid M Martyushev

doi:10.3390/e23081023

Principle of Least Effort and Sentence Length in Public Speaking

Entropy (Basel). 2021 Aug 8;23(8):1023. doi: 10.3390/e23081023.

Authors

Natalia L Tsizhmovska¹, Leonid M Martyushev^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Technical Physics Department, Ural Federal University, 19 Mira St., 620002 Ekaterinburg, Russia.
² Institute of Industrial Ecology, Russian Academy of Sciences, 20 S. Kovalevskaya St., 620219 Ekaterinburg, Russia.

Abstract

The analysis of sentence lengths in the inaugural speeches of US presidents and the annual speeches of UK party leaders is carried out. Transcripts of the speeches are used, rather than the oral production. It is discovered that the average sentence length in these speeches decreases linearly with time, with the slope of 0.13 ± 0.03 words/year. It is shown that among the analyzed distributions (log-normal, folded and half normal, Weibull, generalized Pareto, Rayleigh) the Weibull is the best distribution for describing sentence length. These two results can be considered a consequence of the principle of least effort. The connection of this principle with the well-known principles of maximum and minimum entropy production is discussed.

Keywords: Weibull distribution; minimum entropy production principle; principle of least effort; quantitative linguistics; sentence lengths.