Rammstein Read by the Machine

Till Lindemann is a poet better known as the song writer and lead singer of Rammstein. It  could be interesting to compare the texts band’s lyrics and his poems, maybe gaining a better  insight in how both of them are made. For automated analysis, however, both kinds of texts might seem of little interest. With very  short texts, the basis for statistical reasoning is too small. Indeed, we cannot reasonably apply  the various readability indexes we usually employ when analyzing corpora. But if we restrict  our statistical glimpse to some very elementary calculations, something similar to an  “author’s footprint” might emerge.  I will first use the TTR, the ratio between  the number of single words (“types”) that appear in the text and the total number of words  (“tokens”).Then I will have a look at the numeric relation between functional words  (prepositions articles, conjunctions, etc.) and content words. Some characteristics of Till...