typetokenverhouding

Type-token ratio is a linguistic measure that quantifies the diversity of vocabulary used in a text. It is calculated by dividing the number of unique words (types) by the total number of words (tokens) in a given corpus. A higher type-token ratio indicates a richer and more varied vocabulary, while a lower ratio suggests a more repetitive or limited word choice.

This ratio is often used in computational linguistics and stylometry to analyze texts. For instance, it can help distinguish between different authors, genres, or even developmental stages of language acquisition. A very young child's speech, for example, typically has a lower type-token ratio than that of an adult due to their developing vocabulary.

However, the type-token ratio is influenced by several factors, including text length. Longer texts naturally tend to have lower type-token ratios because even with a large vocabulary, some words are bound to be repeated more frequently as the text grows. Therefore, when comparing texts, it is crucial to consider their lengths or to use variations of the type-token ratio that are normalized for text length. Despite its limitations, the type-token ratio remains a fundamental tool for basic vocabulary diversity analysis.