Frequency consolidation among word N-grams: a practical procedure

This paper considers the issue of frequency consolidation in lists of different length word n-grams (i.e. recurrent word sequences) extracted from the same underlying corpus. A simple algorithm – enhanced by a preparatory stage – is proposed which allows the con- solidation of frequencies among lists of different length n-grams, from 2-grams to 6-grams and beyond. The consolidation adjusts the frequency count of each n-gram to the number of its occurrences minus its occur- rences as part of longer n-grams. Among other uses, such a procedure aids linguistic analysis and allows the non-inflationary counting of word tokens that are part of frequent n-grams of various lengths, which in turn allows an assessment of the proportion of running text made up of recurring chunks. The proposed procedure delivers frequency consolida- tion and substring reduction among word n-grams and is independent of any particular method of n-gram extraction and filtering, making it applicable also in situations where full access to underlying corpora is unavailable