Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peter AT qaya.org>]

On 21/01/2007 00:08, Yitzhak Sapir wrote:
> Dear Peter and Karl,
>
> I very much recommend not relating to much to any assumed statistics.
> The power curve is interesting but significant also is the fact that it does
> not model the observed statistics properly, so much that Peter suggests
> there are problems with the medial Vav and Resh.  I could tentatively
> consider the exceptional nature of the medial vav (namely, there are
> often connections between medial vav roots and roots with equivalent
> medial and final root letters) but the Resh is very problematic and I think
> it is a big warning sign if the Resh cannot be explained. ...

But the resh can be explained, see the continuing discussion. The 
reduced frequency of resh homonyms is just about what would be expected 
from corrections to the original estimates because the assumption of 
small probabilities was breaking down.

> ... Yes, there may
> be many more roots that contain a Resh, even twice as any set of roots
> with any other observed letter, but that is no reason to ignore the Resh.
> It must be remembered that the power curve, especially the version
> described by Peter, is a theory and this theory has to be substantiated
> as well. ...

The corrected version is not a power curve, but it is a more precise theory.

> ... Our base of roots is not a live language base of roots but is
> already a selected sample of roots from a wide statistical population in
> that the language of the Bible is only a sample from the complete
> linguistic variety that existed in the years during which the Bible was
> written.  Peter's theory would have to hold true not just for a population
> but also for such a sample from a population, and it would also have
> to be shown true for other languages, namely Semitic languages.
>
>   
Indeed, although there is no guarantee that the same principles of 
selection of roots apply even in other closely related languages. A test 
would have to be made on the verbs found in a similarly sized corpus of 
natural text. My hypothesis of randomness includes that natural text 
like the Hebrew Bible would use a more or less random selection of the 
verb roots available in the language, and the observations tend to 
confirm this. This assumption might not always apply; a text of a 
different kind might be less random, especially if deliberately edited 
to avoid ambiguities which might imply avoidance of less common homonyms.

> ... Roughly, the number of homonym roots
> with a particular letter in the alphabet in their roots is proportional
> to the total number of roots with that particular letter in their roots. ...
>   

This is not what I have observed. My observations are much closer to a 
square law. Your own preferred graph does not support this either, as 
your straight line not through the origin implies a non-proportionality, 
that a letter needs a certain definite frequency before any homonyms at 
all are observed.

> ... The linear/proportional relationship is observed, and since a linear
> relationship is the simplest relationship that can be considered it is
> probably best to stick with it. ...

NO for at least three reasons:

1) This is NOT what is observed;

2) This is NOT what is predicted by any kind of theory, since it is 
trivially obvious to note that the probability that a new verb added to 
the list will be a homonym is not independent of the existing number of 
verbs;

3) This does NOT have the implications which you suggest for merger of 
letters, because of course if two letters do merge the number of verbs 
will add together, but the number of homonyms will more than add 
together because new homonyms have been created. This new homonym effect 
is not just a deviation but the essence of the issue.

> ... I think that if one truly
> wanted to investigate the nature of the observed relationship one
> would do the calculus to identify the relationship that is governed
> by sound laws such as the above including the above mentioned
> deviations. ...

Indeed, and that is what I have been trying to do. Why have you been 
ignoring my results, and insisting that the relationship must be linear 
even though the analysis as well as the data show that it is not?

> ... That is, the equation of the sound law unification of
> phonemes lays the framework for computing through calculus the
> relationship that is to be expected of a language in which this
> was a governing principle.  So that would be where I'd start, but
> until then, I'd stick with the linear relationship which seems to
> fit the observed data quite well, and because of its simple nature
> does not also require complex explanations or substantiations.
>
>   
You stick with your over-simplistic relationships which doesn't explain 
the observations if you like, an approach which sounds about as 
scholarly as Karl's, but I will follow a proper scholarly approach.

--
Peter Kirk
E-mail:  peter AT qaya.org
Blog:    http://speakertruth.blogspot.com/
Website: http://www.qaya.org/