38th Annual Student Research Conference
Information-Theoretic Analysis of Entropy and Redundancy in Solresol
Kyle E. Ratliff
Dr. Darrin Hetrick and Dr. Douglas Ball, Faculty Mentors
How much phonological diversity is necessary for effective communication? This study investigates this question by analyzing Solresol, an artificial language from 1817 that uses only seven musical notes (do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si) as its entire phonological inventory. Using Shannon’s (1948) information theory as a framework, I developed a custom Python program to analyze how this severely constrained system encodes information. By examining a dictionary of ~3100 Solresol words, I calculate entropy and redundancy values at multiple levels (first-order, conditional, and joint), revealing patterns in note frequency distributions, transition probabilities, and semantic domains. The findings demonstrate how language can function within extreme phonological limitations, offering insights into the minimum requirements for communication systems to function. This research contributes to our understanding of linguistic efficiency, redundancy requirements, and artificial language design principles.
Keywords: constructed languages, information theory, entropy, redundancy, communication systems, Solresol
Topic(s):Linguistics
Statistics
Presentation Type: Oral Presentation
Session: 305-1
Location: SUB Georgian B
Time: 1:00