I. YAKOVLEV CHUVASH STATE PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITY BULLETIN

programming languages, artificial languages, lexical diversity, Shannon entropy, language typology, digital linguistics, formal languages

The article presents a comparative analysis of seven programming languages – Fortran, ALGOL, C, Assembly, Python, Ruby and Brainfuck – focusing on their structural and statistical characteristics. The study examines lexical diversity, Shannon entropy, and typological differences within formal language systems. Particular attention is paid to the syntactic organisation of program code, the distribution and variability of tokens, and the degree of formal complexity specific to each language under consideration. This approach makes it possible to trace how differences in language design influence the construction and interpretation of program texts. Special emphasis is placed on the relationship between the level of language abstraction and its statistical parameters, which may be interpreted as an indirect indicator of cognitive load during code reading and comprehension. The analysis shows that high-level languages tend to exhibit greater lexical variability and higher entropy values, whereas minimalist languages rely on a limited set of elements combined with a rigid structural framework. Overall, the results confirm the applicability of digital linguistics methods to the analysis of artificial and formal languages and point to prospects for further interdisciplinary research.

Mkrtchyan, Tamara Yuryevna – Candidate of Philology, Associate Professor of the Department of Linguistics and Professional Communication, Southern Federal University, Rostov-on-Don, Russia, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0156-7178, tymkrtchyan@sfedu.ru

Makarova, Zhanna Valeryevna – Bachelor’s Student in Intellectual Systems in the Humanities, Southern Federal University, Rostov-on-Don, Russia, https://orcid.org/0009-0009-3798-254x, zmakarova@sfedu.ru