Derivative of a hypergraph as a tool for linguistic pattern analysis

Abstract

The search for linguistic patterns together with stylometry and forensic linguistics has in the theory of complex networks, its structures and its associated mathematical tools essential resources for representing and analyzing texts. In this paper we introduce a new model able to analyze the mesoscopic relationships between sentences, paragraphs, chapters and texts. This model is supported by several mathematical structures such as the hypergraphs or the concept of derivative graph. The methodology raised from this perspective focuses not only in a quantitative index but also in two peculiar mathematical structures named derivative graph and homogeneity graph. These structures are of singular help to both: detecting the style of an author and determining the linguistic level of a text and, eventually, also for detecting similarities and dissimilarities in texts and even plagiarism.