# Linguistic laws in biology

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.07387 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.07387/

## Key facts

- Cited by 5 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 8 of its 116 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 11 Oct 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 8 of 8)

- [Statistical laws in linguistics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1502.03296/) (2015)
- [Optimal coding and the origins of Zipfian laws](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.01545/) (2019)
- [Polysemy and brevity versus frequency in language](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.00812/) (2019)
- [The origins of Zipf's meaning-frequency law](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.00168/) (2017)
- [Optimization models of natural communication](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.2486/) (2014)
- [Compression as a universal principle of animal behavior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1303.6175/) (2013)
- [The advent and fall of a vocabulary learning bias from communicative efficiency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.11519/) (2021)
- [Compression and the origins of Zipf's law for word frequencies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1605.01326/) (2016)

## Built on by (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [Linguistic Laws Meet Protein Sequences: A Comparative Analysis of Subword Tokenization Methods](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.17669/) (2024)
- [The optimal placement of the head in the noun phrase. The case of demonstrative, numeral, adjective and noun](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.10311/) (2024)
- [The exponential distribution of the order of demonstrative, numeral, adjective and noun](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.06342/) (2025)
- [Quadratic Term Correction on Heaps' Law](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.14683/) (2025)
- [How to measure the optimality of word or gesture order with respect to the principle of swap distance minimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.01938/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Linguistic laws, the common statistical patterns of human language, have been investigated by quantitative linguists for nearly a century. Recently, biologists from a range of disciplines have started to explore the prevalence of these laws beyond language, finding patterns consistent with linguistic laws across multiple levels of biological organisation, from molecular (genomes, genes, and proteins) to organismal (animal behaviour) to ecological (populations and ecosystems). We propose a new conceptual framework for the study of linguistic laws in biology, comprising and integrating distinct levels of analysis, from description to prediction to theory building. Adopting this framework will provide critical new insights into the fundamental rules of organisation underpinning natural systems, unifying linguistic laws and core theory in biology.