Accession Number:

ADA183636

Title:

The Stylist: A Pascal Program for Analyzing Prose Style

Descriptive Note:

Master's thesis

Corporate Author:

NAVAL POSTGRADUATE SCHOOL MONTEREY CA

Personal Author(s):

• Cool, Thomas C.

Report Date:

1987-06-01

Pagination or Media Count:

141.0

Abstract:

Computational Stylists is the computer-assisted study of literary style. Computational Linguistics is the computer-assisted study of language itself. These disciplines are the automated subsets of Statistical or Quantitative Stylistics and Linguistics, which are the mathematical studies of style and language. All of these disciplines involve quantifying aspects of language and then manipulating these quantities in an attempt to gain insight into how and why the language works. The Stylist is a Waterloo Pascal program that analyzes the style of English prose. A style checker, The Stylist pertains to Computational Stylistics and Computer Assisted Composition Instruction CACI . The Stylist creates an affective model of the text based upon the following characteristics of its component words etymology, tangibility, difficulty, emotional connotation and vigor. The Stylist then compares this model to the standards of fiction or nonfiction texts and reports results and recommendations to the user. The Stylist also creates a concordance of the users input text using a new data structure called a Concordance Search Tree CST. A CST is a binary search tree with a linked list threaded through it recording the order of the use of each word. An in order traversal of the tree, with a traversal of the linked list during each visit, creates a concordance. This thesis also reviews related literature and programs.

Descriptors:

• *COMPUTER PROGRAMS
• *COMPUTATIONAL LINGUISTICS
• DATA BASES
• THESES
• TREES
• SEARCHING
• STANDARDS
• LANGUAGE
• COMPUTER APPLICATIONS
• WORDS(LANGUAGE)
• MATHEMATICS

Subject Categories:

• Linguistics
• Computer Programming and Software

Distribution Statement:

APPROVED FOR PUBLIC RELEASE