"Words, words, words." Hamlet (II,ii,194)
The main idea of HAMLET © is to search a text file for words
in a given vocabulary list, and to count joint frequencies within
any specified context unit, within sentences, or as collocations
within a given span of words.
Individual word frequencies , joint frequencies
for pairs of words , both expressed in terms of the chosen unit
of context, and the corresponding standardised joint frequencies
are displayed in a similarities matrix, which can be submitted to
a simple cluster analysis and multi-dimensional scaling. (Instead
of the above (Jaccard) coefficient, it is possible to apply Sokal's
'matching coefficient', which takes account also of joint
non-occurrences.)
A further option allows comparison of the results of applying multi-
dimensional scaling to matrices of joint frequencies derived from a
number of texts, using Procrustean Individual Differences Scaling
(PINDIS).
Further procedures are included to help to determine the broad
characteristics of word usage in a text:
KWIC offers Key-Word-In-Context listings for any given word-string.
WORDLIST generates lists of words and frequencies.
COMPARE lists words common to pairs of texts, and is useful in
generating vocabulary lists, including synonyms, for use in comparing
a number of texts.
PROFILE displays the distributions of word and sentence lengths in
a text, and may be useful for stylistic analysis.
