Punctuation Patterns in <i>Finnegans Wake</i> by James Joyce Are Largely Translation-Invariant

Abstract

The complexity characteristics of texts written in natural languages are significantly related to the rules of punctuation. In particular, the distances between punctuation marks measured by the number of words quite universally follow the family of Weibull distributions known from survival analyses. However, the values of two parameters marking specific forms of these distributions distinguish specific languages. This is such a strong constraint that the punctuation distributions of texts translated from the original language into another adopt quantitative characteristics of the target language. All these changes take place within Weibull distributions such that the corresponding hazard functions are always increasing. Recent previous research shows that James Joyce’s famous novel Finnegans Wake is subject to such an extreme distribution from the Weibull family that the corresponding hazard function is clearly decreasing. At the same time, the distances of sentence-ending punctuation marks, determining the sentence length variability, have an almost perfect multifractal organization to an extent found nowhere else in the literature thus far. In the present contribution, based on several available translations (Dutch, French, German, Polish, and Russian) of Finnegans Wake, it is shown that the punctuation characteristics of this work remain largely translation-invariant, contrary to the common cases. These observations may constitute further evidence that Finnegans Wake is a translinguistic work in this respect as well, in line with Joyce’s original intention.

Keywords

• complex systems
• natural language
• multiscaling
• punctuation
• sentence length variability
• discrete Weibull distribution