The Historian’s Fingerprint: A Computational Stylometric Study of the Zuo Commentary and Discourses of the States
Wenjie Hua · 2025
Previous studies suggest that authorship can be inferred through stylistic features like function word usage and grammatical patterns, yet such analyses remain limited for Old Chinese texts with disputed authorship.Computational methods enable a more nuanced exploration of these texts.This study applies stylometric analysis to examine the authorship controversy between the Zuo Commentary and the Discourses of the States.Using PoS 4-grams, Kullback-Leibler divergence, and multidimensional scaling (MDS), we systematically compare their stylistic profiles.Results show that the Zuo Commentary exhibits high internal consistency, especially in the later eight Dukes chapters, supporting its integration by a single scholarly tradition.In contrast, the Discourses of the States displays greater stylistic diversity, aligning with the multiple-source compilation theory.Further analysis reveals partial stylistic similarities among the Lu, Jin, and Chu-related chapters, suggesting shared influences.These findings provide quantitative support for Tong Shuye's arguments and extend statistical validation of Bernhard Karlgren's assertion on the textual unity of the Zuo Commentary.