Word-Class Distribution in Sentences of Fixed Length
Murray Aborn, Herbert Rubenstein · Language · 1956
[Samples of printed English sentences of three lengths were drawn randomly from a representative selection of popular magazines. The words of each sentence were classified according to Fries's system and a count was made of the various word classes at each sentence position. The tabulations were plotted as frequency distributions and treated statistically. Principally, the data obtained from all three sentence lengths indicate (1) that the greatest variations in word-class frequency tend to occur in sentence extremes and the immediately adjoining positions, and (2) that different word classes have characteristic patterns of variation.]