Conversations Choices And Chances

The Advanced Theory of Language as Choice and Chance

In trying to give an account of the statistical properties of language, one is faced with the problem of having to find the common thread which would show the many and multifarious forms of language statistic- embodied in scattered papers written by linguists, philosophers, mathe maticians, engineers, each using his own professional idiom - as belong ing to one great whole: quantitative linguistics. This means that the investigator has to find the system of this branch of science which would enable him to arrange the vast material in an orderly fashion, and present it as an organic whole. Such a system is conceived in this book, as comprising the following disciplines as the four main branches of literary statistics: Statistical Linguistics, Stylostatistics, Optimal Systems of Language Structure, and Linguistic Duality (Parts I-IV). The Introduction is meant to define the position of the book with regard to both, linguistics and statistics.

Choice and Chance

Fate Choice and Chance

Fate Choice and Chance recounts Ben Peters quest to escape his familys traditions and poverty, the haunting memories of the past, and the limitations of the small town on the Canadian prairies where he lived as a child. His life could have gone in many different directions, but the interplay of fate and chance resulted in choices leading inexorably to the present. In retrospect, his most fateful choice was to marry the woman that he loved. Ultimately he achieves the American dream of financial success in New York City, but this is far removed from his youthful dreams of public service. The path from that small prairie town to New York City was treacherous and crooked, leading through Toronto, a city of broken dreams. His painful break with the past has left emotional scars, and he tries to deal with them by neatly compartmentalizing his life into two halves the forgotten Canadian past and the American present. But then his chance encounter with a mysterious stranger on a business trip to Toronto and their conversation about a murder that occurred in the high school in that small prairie town of his childhood leads him to embark on a spiritual journey to reconciliation with the past and the healing power of forgiveness.