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  • From: "K Randolph" <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>
  • To: "B Hebrew" <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Peter Kirk's homonym percentage table
  • Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2007 16:59:39 -0700

Peter:

My friend is retired, and doesn't really want to investigate the
question. I thought that since he's retired, he would welcome an
intellectual question to stave off boredom.

However, from a strict probability viewpoint, he said that we should
expect no more than one homonym every 21 * 22 roots (assuming that
shin and sin are one letter), or about four for the whole group.

I went through the list of homonyms that you provided, taking out all
those where I questioned if they could be homonyms, and ended up with
19, and I question at least one of those. That is a far cry from the
267 that you list.

(A couple of those with a medial waw I removed because though they
were written the same, in one case the waw was used as a consonant,
while the second time as a mater lexionis. Hence, they are not
homonyms, just homographs.)

Yours, Karl W. Randolph.

On 1/21/07, Peter Kirk <peter AT qaya.org> wrote:
On 21/01/2007 05:53, K Randolph wrote:
> Peter:
>
> I'm having an intuitive reaction that something doesn't seem right
> here. I don't know enough to be able to tell what is wrong, but if the
> formula is correct, it should not be giving the obviously incorrect
> response for the resh.
>
>
The original formula was not completely correct in that it involved some
approximations which were not completely valid. The adjusted formula
should be more correct, but is too complex to calculate precisely. My
estimate of the result given by the new formula is in the same region as
the observed figures for resh. But in fact I would be rather surprised
to see a precise fit, for the basic assumptions I made in the
hypothesis, that verb roots are randomly distributed with no tendency to
avoid homonyms, seem so unlikely.

> I sent a copy of the spreadsheet with some explanatory info. to a
> friend who has a PhD in statistics, but he hasn't responded yet.
>
>
I would be interested in any response.

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





  • Re: [b-hebrew] Peter Kirk's homonym percentage table, K Randolph, 03/19/2007

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