Multiple Communication Channels in Literary Texts

Abstract

The statistical theory of language translation is used to compare how a literary character speaks to different audiences by diversifying two important linguistic communication channels: the "sentences channel" and the "interpunctions channel". The theory can "measure" how the author shapes a character speaking to different audiences, by modulating deep-language parameters. To show its power, we have applied the theory to the literary corpus of Maria Valtorta, an Italian mystic of the XX-century. The likeness index L I , ranging from 0 to 1, allows to "measure" how two linguistic channels are similar, therefore implying that a character speaks to different audiences in the same way. A 6-dB difference between the signal-to-noise ratios of two channels already gives 0.5 L I ≈ , a threshold below which the two channels depend very little on each other, therefore implying that the character addresses different audiences differently. In conclusion, multiple linguistic channels can describe the "fine tuning" that a literary author uses to diversify characters or distinguish the behavior of the same character in different situations. The theory can be applied to literary corpora written in any alphabetical language.

Linguistic Communication Channels Reveal Connections between Texts: The New Testament and Greek Literature

“…[12][13][14][15][16][17][18] report results not based on mathematical analyses of texts-as our theory does-and when a mathematical approach is used, as in Refs. , most of these studies consider neither Shannon's communication theory, nor the fundamental connection that some linguistic variables seem to have with reading ability and short-term memory (STM) capacity [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]. In fact, these studies are mainly concerned with automatic translations, not with a high-level direct response of human readers, as our theory is.…”

“…In recent papers [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8], we have developed a general theory on the deep-language mathematical structure of literary texts (or any long text), including their translation. The theory is based on linguistic communication channels-suitably defined-always contained in texts and based on the theory of regression lines [9,10] and Shannon's communication and information theory [11].…”

“…In addition to the total number of characters, words, sentences, and interpunctions (punctuation marks) of a text, the linguistic parameters considered in our theory are the number of words n W per chapter, the number of sentences n S per chapter, and the number of interpunctions per chapter n I . Instead of referring to chapters, the analysis can refer to any chosen subdivision of a literary text, large enough to provide reliable statistics, such as a few hundred words [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8].…”

Chronology of Jesus’ and John the Baptist’ Births, and Jesus’ Epiphany and Death in Maria Valtorta’s Writings

“…The history of Christianity has always been characterized by mystics, persons who claim having direct talks with Jesus and visions of his life, which they describe in literary works. In principle, any scientific assessment of the details contained in these writings would seem impossible but in some recent works (Matricciani & De Caro, 2017;Matricciani & De Caro, 2018;De Caro et al, 2020;De Caro et al, 2021b;Matricciani, 2022b) a series of scientific studies on the large literary Corpus written by Maria Valtorta, an Italian mystic of the XX century, have shown that many coherent data on Jesus' life and Palestine of 2000 years ago can be unexpectedly extracted and verified from her literary work. Her writings contain a large amount of historical, biblical, geographical, archaeological, astronomical and meteorological information, hardly attributable to her skills, not to mention her very poor health conditions, because Maria Valtorta received an education not sufficient to justify what emerges from her writings.…”

“…By converting sequences of words into intervals, through a suitable reading/speaking speed, their duration was found to be realistic. Moreover, she can develop the literary character Jesus in such a way that he talks to specific audiences differently (Matricciani, 2022b). Maria Valtorta also describes apostle Peter's first burial site, which, she writes, was not on the Vatican Hill.…”