Syntactic Patterns in a Sample of Technical English

A fundamental assumption of statistical linguistics is that there are differences worthy of note in the frequency of various units in certain texts. At the same Time, there are differences in frequencies which would not be considered important. The question is, how is an "important" difference tO be determined? The mesolution of this pmoblem has been made more important by the increasing populamity of statistical appmoaches to questions of style and authorship. Definitions of style from this point of view are based on notions of distinctiveness and consistencyin literary performance. While distinctiveness appears to be the more important component of style, it is recognized that some consistency is necessary to lend significance to whatever feature might be distinctive.