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Beyond Word Frequency: Bursts, Lulls, and Scaling in the Temporal Distributions of Words 1 1,2 1,3 Eduardo G. Altmann , Janet B. Pierrehumbert , Adilson E. Motter * 1 Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, United States of America, 2 Department of Linguistics, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, United States of America, 3 Department of Physics and Astronomy, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, United States of America Abstract Background: Zipf’s discovery that word frequency distributions obey a power law established parallels between biological and physical processes, and language, laying the groundwork for a complex systems perspective on human communication. More recent research has also identified scaling regularities in the dynamics underlying the successive occurrences of events, suggesting the possibility of similar findings for language as well. Methodology/Principal Findings: By considering frequent words in USENET discussion groups and in disparate databases where the language has different levels of formality, here we show that the distributions of distances between successive occurrences of the same word display bursty deviations from a Poisson process and are well characterized by a stretched exponential (Weibull) scaling. The extent of this deviation depends strongly on semantic type – a measure of the logicality of each word – and less strongly on frequency. We develop a generative model of this behavior that fully determines the dynamics of word usage. Conclusions/Significance: Recurrence patterns of words are well described by a stretched exponential distribution of recurren