THE AMPLITUDES OF THE IDIOSTYLE OSCILLATIONS OF 20 AUTHORS OF RUSSIAN PROSE — ACCORDING TO THEIR MAIN WORKS

To assess the stylistic proximity between the text X and the texts of the applicants for authorship (or for attribution proper), the sum of the absolute values of the differences between the frequencies of “small words” in the studied text X and the average frequencies of these words in the texts of the applicants is used. To date, we refer about 900 conjunctions, prepositions, particles, discursive and introductory words, as well as fixed expressions with them, to “small words”. The idiostyle of each text is defi ned as a set of frequencies of small words in the text, and the author’s idiostyle is defi ned as a set of their average frequencies across all the author’s texts. Out of 49 authors of Russian literature of the XIX–XX centuries, 20 authors were selected, whose texts were studied in particular detail. In 10 of them, the frequencies of “small words” in all texts turned out to be stable (i.e., these authors are “balanced”), while in 10 others, some texts turned out to be closer in idiostyle to the idiostyles of other authors (we call them “unbalanced”). This should be explained either by a novice author’s imitation of one of his authoritative contemporaries (or even several, as in the case of “Netochka Nezvanova” by Dostoevsky), or some special experiment of the author with his style. The appendix to the article deals with 7 diff erent cases when, with an increase in the number of bonds in the system, the indicators of the “imbalance” of the text change.