Abstract
Stylometry is the application of computational techniques
to solve tasks associated with authorship. Today, the need
for stylometry has risen because technology enables issues such
as fraud detection, and cybercrime has made the need to identify
authors crucial effectively. There are many advanced techniques
to perform stylometry; however, many still default to the de facto
method known as Burrow’s Delta. There is a plethora of research
on Burrows Delta across several languages. However, these are
outside of a South African context. This article explores the
effectiveness of Burrows Delta within a corpus of Afrikaans texts.
Afrikaans is a South African language with roots in Dutch and
is spoken by 12% of the population. There is a significant source
of Afrikaans literature, so there is great value in understanding
the impact of AA related tasks using Burrows Delta.