No,you are right on. there is a way of testing this: you compile a list of repeated
grams and measure the degree of repetivity. I am doing this with early modern drama
right now, and the results are illuminating. I may play some Spenser games and let
you know, I am virtually certain that Spenser checks in at the high end of the
repetivity range. And this is is not incompatible with high lexical density.
> Is it possible to have lexical density and the taste for recycling
> phrases/words that I've noted in Spenser? My impression of Spenser's
> lack of lexical density may be an optical/aural illusion. In other
> words, because he likes to recycle phrases (at least the ones relating
> to ruins and time that I've followed), can he give the impression of
> lexical non-density? Or maybe my ear is just off (can't carry a tune,
> either). Anne P.
>
> On Aug 17, 2010, at 8:22 PM, Martin Mueller wrote:
>
>> In an earlier posting I suggested that Spenser's lexical density
>> might be higher
>> than Shakespeare's.
>>
>> I've done some simple experiments that confirm this hypothesis.
>> Using WordHoard
>> data, I selected three 3,000 word sets drawn at random from
>> respectively the Faerie
>> Queene and the Shakespeare canon.
>>
>> The three Spenser samples contained 1054, 1042, and 1050 distinct
>> lemmata.
>> The three Shakespeare samples contained 986, 976, and 972 distinct
>> lemmata.
>>
>> By this test Spenser's lexical density (35%) is marginally higher
>> than Shakespeare's
>> (32.5%).
>>
>> I remember a conversation with Donald Foster quite a few years ago
>> in which he said
>> that the lexical density of poems is higher than of plays. This
>> makes a lot of
>> sense, and it would be easy enough to test it. But I'm too lazy to
>> do that right
>> now. A subtler analysis would distinguish between genres, between
>> verse and prose,
>> and by time.
>
>
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