[Corpora-List] Prepositions in the texts as a clue to differenciate the texts

[Yuri Tambovtsev]

Dear Corpora colleagues, I wonder if you could advise me which mathematical methods to use. In fact, I use the Chi-square criterion to investigate the authorship of Tihiy Don (The Quiet Don) by Mihail A. Sholohov. Is it a reliable method? Is it not misleading?? Actually, the frequency of the distribution 25 prepositions in Russian like "on, in, under, before, over, for, etc" could differentiate all the authors correctly. L.N. Tolstoy was always different from Turgenev, Goncharov, Akunin, Emets, Vainer or Sholohov.  Some time ago there was a heated discussion on the authorship of Tihiy Don for which Mihail Sholohov received the Nobel Prize in literature. However, it came to no conclusion. Actually, A. I. Solzhenitsyn, I.N. Medvedeva-Tomashevskaya, Z. Tomashevskaya, A. Zayats, V, Pravdyuk, R. Medvedev, A. Fomenko and M. Mezentsev are sure that M. Sholohov stole the text of Tihiy Don from Fedor Kryukov, who was the Don writer and died during the Russian Civil war in 1919. A. Fomenko studied the frequency of occurrence of the functional words and came to the conclusion that it was not Sholohov who wrote Tihiy Don (The Quiet Don) but Fedor Kryukov. However, the Norwegian Slavist Kjetso came to the oposite conclusion, using the statistical methods. Kjetso stated that it was Sholohov who wrote Tihiy Don. I wonder if there were any other investigations using math. statistical methods. I studied the use of the prepositions in the prose of Sholohov, Krykov, Tolstoy, Dostoevskiy, Goncharov, Turgenev, Bulgakov, Emets, Dontsova, Akunin and some other writers. My study showed that it is possible to differentiate writers by the frequency of the use of prepositions. I wonder in which journal or magazine I may publish my results. I'd like to discuss my results with those interested. I am looking forward to hearing from you to my e-mail address: yutamb at mail.ru  Sincerely yours Yuri Tambovtsev, Novosibirsk, Russia  
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