About labbe's "intertextual distance"

In the 2001, Volume 8, Number 3, issue of the Journal of Quantitative Linguistics (pp. 213 – 231) M. M. Dominique and Cyril Labbé published a paper entitled “Inter-Textual Distance and Authorship Attribution. Corneille and Molière”. Dominique and Cyril Labbé (hereafter referred to as DCL) propose a new formula for the computation of dissimilarity between texts, as well as a distances scale. They intend to apply it in the field of authorship attribution, and especially in one particular case: a controversy about the authorship of several plays signed by Molière. The object of this paper is to discuss their rationale and conclusions in the light of several simple experiments. Though we will quote DCL's paper throughout, some previous knowledge of its content is recommended. The reader will be also referred to a book written by Dominique Labbé (hereafter DL) in 2003 (Labbé, 2003). In that book, DL recapitulates for a larger audience most of the contents of the paper.