Can Function Word Distribution Indicate Authorship? James L. Wyatt Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics Florida State University The w r i t e r ' s interest in the answer to the question contained in the t i t l e of this paper stems from his discovery of seemingly s t a r t l i n g aberrations in word frequency d i s t r i b u t i o n s in the Celestina, an anonymous work of Spanish l i t e r a t u r e which conceivably co{Id be the product of one, two, or three authors. This work appeared in 1499 with sixteen parts. An edition in 1501 also appeared with sixteen parts but contained a l e t t e r "to a friend" stating that the f i r s t part was w r i t t e n by one unnamed person and that the succeeding f i f t e e n parts were w r i t t e n by the author of the l e t t e r , i d e n t i f i e
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