GRGR: Jessica Swanlake

[jbor at bigpond.com]

On 03/12/2005 David Meury wrote:

> In any case, the evocation of the music might just be
> a way of creating atmosphere.

I read Jessica's name as evoking the ballet, rather than the music -- 
not the specific plot of Swan Lake (which is *the* ballet, after all), 
but in terms of the poise and precision of a prima ballerina. Cf. 
Milton Gloaming explaining Zipf's Principle of Least Effort to her, 
"even her bewilderment graceful" (32).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swan_Lake

Interestingly, even though Gloaming names the title of Zipf's 1949 
book, what he actually describes are statistical principles of word 
frequency which Zipf proposed in his _The Psycho-biology of Language: 
An Introduction to Dynamic Philology_ (1935). "Zipf's Law" is still 
current in applied linguistics.

http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=5490

http://alpha2.infim.ro/~ltpd/Zipf_Law.html

best