Quantitative linguistics (QL) is my passion since I discovered it with Ramon Ferrer-i-Cancho.
QL tries to investigate the language and communication systems from a mathematical and physical perspective: Can we find linguistic laws, analogously to physical laws? Sure!
Since I started studying linguistics in 1997 I always thought that science should enter fully into the study of language, at that time still dominated by pseudoscientific approaches…
“Qualitative linguistics searches for rules and enumerates the exceptions, quantitative linguistics searches for models of phenomena and tests the models, just as in physics. In quantitative linguistics one gets deeper and is ready to abandon a falsified hypothesis; in qualitative linguistics one adheres to a “school” and follows the prescriptions just as in a religion. Projects are accepted only if they are in line with the dominant school – represented by the members of the commissions.” Gabriel Altmann (1931-2020), in Glottometrics 33 (2016), p. 32. Editorial Glotto 33, 2016 (iqla.org)