Re: low entropy text

[Jorge Stolfi <stolfi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

    > [Brian Farnell:] Just an embryonic thought, I know it has been
    > suggested before, but I haven't yet seen some one suggest it
    > because of a mathematical reason. What about, rhyming, meter,
    > assonance, consonance and other poetry word games? Perhaps some
    > literary scholar out there has some suggested pieces of poetry
    > that have rigid styles but differ from one another. An analyses
    > of each one of them, compared to a standard prose text in the
    > same language might give us some ideas about what literary
    > devices do what to a natural language.

The VMs could be poetry or rhyming incantations, although the format
is a bit strange (many pages have only a single paragraph), and the
illustrations don't quite fit (most are plants or parts thereof).

Rhyming should decrease entropy only a little (basically a couple of
letters per line, or less). As for metrics, I don't know. A rigid
metric structure should make the text somewhat easier to predict, and
hence it should lower its entropy; but, on the other hand, it will
force the poet to use less common words and phrases, so the entropy
may increase.

The preface to Cervantes's "Don Quixote" (1605) contains many short
poems and dedications from legendary knights and other fictional
characters, obviously by the author himself. Some of them have
all the rhyming syllables omitted, and yet they are still readable:

  AL LIBRO DE DON QUIJOTE DE LA MANCHA

  URGANDA LA DESCONOCIDA       

    Si de llegarte a los bue-,       
  libro, fueres con letu-,           
  no te dirá el boquirru-            
  que no pones bien los de-.         
  Mas si el pan no se te cue-        
  por ir a manos de idio-,           
  verás, de manos a bo-,             
  aún no dar una en el cla-;         
  [...]
    Advierte que es desati-,         
  siendo de vidrio el teja-,         
  tomar piedras en las ma-           
  para tirar al veci-.               
  Deja que el hombre de jui-         
  en las obras que compo-            
  se vaya con pies de plo-;          
  que el que saca a luz pape-        
  para entretener donce-,            
  escribe a tontas y a lo-.          

All the best,

--stolfi