Quantitative linguistics, an invitation

This book is a strongly extended translation of the German original 'Quantitative Linguistik. Eine Annäherung'. It is written for beginners in a rather ?non-mathematical? language and contains many computations showing the procedures which should be followed by a researcher who begins to work with a language. It aims at showing some law-candidates concerning length, diversification, evolution, borrowings, ranking, mutual relations, first steps in synergetics, etc. A hypothesis can become law only if it is derived from a theory and corroborated on as many texts and languages as possible. An introduction to the history of quantitative linguistics shows that there is a very old tradition beginning about 2500 years ago. 0.