# Rank-frequency relation for Chinese characters

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1309.1536 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1309.1536/

## Key facts

- Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 6 Sep 2013.

## Built on by (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [Direct and indirect evidence of compression of word lengths. Zipf's law of abbreviation revisited](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.10128/) (2023)
- [Language Complexity and Speech Recognition Accuracy: Orthographic Complexity Hurts, Phonological Complexity Doesn't](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.09202/) (2024)
- [Optimal alphabet for single text compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.05234/) (2022)
- [The optimality of word lengths. Theoretical foundations and an empirical study](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.10384/) (2022)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We show that the Zipf's law for Chinese characters perfectly holds for sufficiently short texts (few thousand different characters). The scenario of its validity is similar to the Zipf's law for words in short English texts. For long Chinese texts (or for mixtures of short Chinese texts), rank-frequency relations for Chinese characters display a two-layer, hierarchic structure that combines a Zipfian power-law regime for frequent characters (first layer) with an exponential-like regime for less frequent characters (second layer). For these two layers we provide different (though related) theoretical descriptions that include the range of low-frequency characters (hapax legomena). The comparative analysis of rank-frequency relations for Chinese characters versus English words illustrates the extent to which the characters play for Chinese writers the same role as the words for those writing within alphabetical systems.