呢條定律係由美國語言學家佐治揳夫喺 1945 年提出嘅,當時揳夫佢喺度研究英文入面嘅字,發覺英文裏面出現得最密嗰幾隻字-the, be, to, of, a-都好短,頂嗮櫳得嗰三隻字母咁長;打後佢去研究拉丁文嗰陣,又係觀察到噉嘅情況,於是佢就提出咗簡潔定律,主張人喺講嘢嗰時傾向會想令啲常用字有咁短得咁短,噉做講嘢嗰陣會慳返好多精力,而且寫字嗰陣又會慳返好多時間[2]。
↑Bentz C., Ferrer-i-Cancho R. (2016). Zipf's Law of abbreviation as a language universal. Universitätsbibliothek Tübingen.
↑Zipf, G.K. (1949). Human behavior and the principle of least effort. Cambridge, MA: Addison-Wesley.
↑Heaps, Harold Stanley (1978), Information Retrieval: Computational and Theoretical Aspects, Academic Press. Heaps' law is proposed in Section 7.5 (pp. 206-208).