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Updated: Jun 2, 2026

Following the Dynamics of Structural Variants in Experimentally Evolved Populations
Published on: February 3, 2023
Emergence of Zipf's law in the evolution of communication
Bernat Corominas-Murtra1, Jordi Fortuny, Ricard V Solé
1ICREA-Complex Systems Lab, Universitat Pompeu Fabra-Parc de Recerca Biomèdica de Barcelona (PRBB), Dr Aiguader 88, E-08003 Barcelona, Spain.
Abstract:
Zipf's law seems to be ubiquitous in human languages and appears to be a universal property of complex communicating systems. Following the early proposal made by Zipf concerning the presence of a tension between the efforts of speaker and hearer in a communication system, we introduce evolution by means of a variational approach to the problem based on Kullback's Minimum Discrimination of Information Principle. Therefore, using a formalism fully embedded in the framework of information theory, we demonstrate that Zipf's law is the only expected outcome of an evolving communicative system under a rigorous definition of the communicative tension described by Zipf.
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