Mathematical and Linguistic Characterization of Orhan Pamuk's Nobel Works
This research provides a mathematical framework for analyzing literary texts, but it is incremental as it applies existing statistical methods to a specific author's works without broader implications for literature or linguistics.
The study applied fractal geometry and Zipf's law to statistically analyze Orhan Pamuk's Nobel-winning Turkish literary works, finding that the fractal dimensions and Zipf dimensions varied across texts, with 'My Name is Red' showing distinct statistical properties despite no fundamental linguistic differences.
In this study, Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk's works are chosen as examples of Turkish literature. By counting the number of letters and words in his texts, we find it possible to study his works statistically. It has been known that there is a geometrical order in text structures. Here the method based on the basic assumption of fractal geometry is introduced for calculating the fractal dimensions of Pamuk's texts. The results are compared with the applications of Zipf's law, which is successfully applied for letters and words, where two concepts, namely Zipf's dimension and Zipf's order, are introduced. The Zipf dimension of the novel My Name is Red is found to be much different than his other novels. However, it is linguistically observed that there is no fundamental difference between his corpora. The results are interpreted in terms of fractal dimensions and the Turkish language.