Fourier Analysis of Written Words Focusing on Vowels: From Word Salad to Literary Works

Abstract

We compared the population and the periodicities of vowels in texts of word salad, normal conversations and literary works using random walk representation and its Fourier transformation, in both Japanese and English. The random walk patterns of normal conversations were more coherent than those of word salads. Significant differences in characteristic periodicities were observed at around 7 and further long periodicities in word salad in Japanese, while in word salad in English they were observed at around 4. Similar analyses were performed on literary works by Japanese novelists, Yukio Mishima and Osamu Dazai. These analyses demonstrated that the random walk pattern was more spread in Dazai’s novels than those by Mishima. In Dazai’s novels, systematic upward deviation of the slope of the random walks was evident as a function of age, possibly representing his mental decline. The same analyses were performed for literary works by English novelists, Arthur Conan Doyle and Lucy Maud Montgomery. The results indicated that the random walk pattern was more spread in novels by Montgomery than in those by Doyle. A slight systematic upward deviation of the slope of the random walk pattern was also observed in Montgomery’s novels as a function of age, possibly representing an alteration of her mental state. The random walk pattern and Fourier transform analyses of texts, wherever they are written or spoken, presented here would be useful to elucidate various stages of human mental states, and, in future, could also be implemented in social robots to assess of the mental state of a cared person.

Keywords: Signifier, Signified, Fourier Analysis, Random Walk, Vowel, Word Salad, Literary Works, Multi-language Analysis

DOI: 10.7176/JLLL/63-05

Publication date: December 31^st 2019