Linguistic Fractal Analysis of Symbolic Sequences

In this paper we present tools for linguistic fractal analysis of symbolic sequences — sequences of formal symbols from a given alphabet. We introduce a method for graphically representing and analyzing symbolic sequences based on fractal Iterated Function Systems (IFSs). This method gives a visual description (a pattern) of the structure of the subsequences within the original sequence, and permits quantitative characterization of the resulting patterns. We present a number of examples and also demonstrate the use of J/Link for importing sequences and speeding up the computations.