Глотометрията експлицира основите на съпоставителната лингвистика

Glottometry, developed during the last ten years or so by the authors with the help of students from Moscow State University and the University of Sofia, is a set of methods for reducing a text into a measurable object of analysis. The measurability is achieved through the excerption (selection) of samples which contain either an equal quantity of words from the text (leximetrisation), or an equal quantity of speech sounds (phonometrisation). The leximetric samples are convenient for contrasting the statistical characteristics of texts in the same language. The phonometric samples are convenient for contrasting texts in different languages. Contrastive linguistics consists of studies which usually lead to statements about the more or less frequent occurrence of facts of a certain type in various texts (text corpora). Hence, contrastive linguistics is always based on implicit glottometric evaluations of the size of the contrasted texts. Explicit glottometry safeguards the linguists against hasty generalizations. It offers a clear hierarchy of the objects of analysis, based on their frequency. Through the application of statistical minimization of the contrasted texts glottometry makes it possible to achieve reliable results in the contrastive analysis.