On Stylometric Features of H. Beam Piper’s Omnilingual

Abstract

ABSTRACT The article will focus on H. Beam Piper’s classical story Omnilingual (1957). This Piper-esque writing has entered the records of the science fiction prose for the ‘Martian’ periodic table of elements, being synonymous with a scientific ‘Rosetta-like stone’ in the decipherment area. The work, while having a search potential in text analysis and stylistics, may add in a parallel fashion some lustre to the validity of science as a communicative channel in non-conventional circumstances. In order to capture stylistic features of the novelette, a number of quantitative indicators are drawn in. The study will concentrate on vocabulary-richness indexes (TTR, entropy, RR, RRMc, G, ATL, HL, MATTR, and Lambda), a complex assessment of activity (Busemann’s coefficient, the chi-square testing classification), and a sketch of the Belza chain analysis. The goal of the article is to find distinctive features of the piece in question, and point out ways for further research.