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Randomness, Structure and Causality - Agenda

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Abstracts


The Vocabulary of Grammar-Based Codes and the Logical Consistency of Texts

Debowski, Lukasz (ldebowsk@ipipan.waw.pl)
Polish Academy of Sciences

We will present a new explanation for the distribution of words in natural language which is grounded in information theory and inspired by recent research in excess entropy. Namely, we will demonstrate a theorem with the following informal statement: If a text of length describes independent facts in a repetitive way then the text contains at least different words.  In the formal statement, two modeling postulates are adopted. Firstly, the words are understood as nonterminal symbols of the shortest grammar-based encoding of the text. Secondly, the text is assumed to be emitted by a finite-energy strongly nonergodic source whereas the facts are binary IID variables predictable in a shift-invariant way. Besides the theorem, we will exhibit a few stochastic processes to which this and similar statements can be related.

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