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  • From: Yigal Levin <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il>
  • To: b-hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Zipf and B-Hebrew
  • Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 03:01:51 +0200

Dear All,

It has been pointed out that the author of the "unsigned" post that I reacted to did indeed sign his post, although his signature was "hidden" (not purposely, i'm sure!) behind a lond series of dashes. I apologize for my hasty reaction, but do request that you all try to make your signitures a little more visible.

Yigal Levin


----- Original Message ----- From: "Yigal Levin" <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il>
To: "b-hebrew" <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Sunday, October 14, 2007 2:38 AM
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Zipf and B-Hebrew


Dear Whoever You Are,

One of the basic rules of this lits is that each mosting be signed with the
full name of the poster. Additional information, such as title,
institutional affiliation and place of residence, is optional. This makes
for much more pleasant "conversation" and helps us all know who the people
behind the posts are. Especially, setting your email identity so that you
appear as "biblical hebrew" is not a good way to begin posting on this list.
So please identify yourself and then ask the question again.


Yigal Levin
co-moderator


----- Original Message ----- From: "biblical hebrew" <jcr.bhebrew AT gmail.com>
To: "b-hebrew" <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Saturday, October 13, 2007 8:37 PM
Subject: [b-hebrew] Zipf and B-Hebrew


Hi all,

I was wondering what people's opinions about one of Zipf's ideas are.
Zipf, best known for Zipf's law, suggests that there is a playoff
between ease of speaking and ease of understanding that forces the
distribution of words which have single unambiguous meanings and words
that
have multiple meanings discerned from context. That is to say that the
optimal situation for the speaker would be that language consisted of one
word which could express every possible meaning while the optimal
situation
for the hearer would be that every word had a unique meaning so that no
ambiguities need be resolved. He further suggests that these conflicting
interests create linguistic forces which cause any given language to, in a
manner of compromise between the needs of the speaker and of the hearer,
have a mix of unambiguous words and words with multiple meanings with the
rarest words typically having a very specific and unambiguous meaning and
the most common words having the most possible semantic meanings
disambiguated by context.

I was wondering what the list members feelings about Zipf's proposal are
with respect to b-hebrew. Are his ideas supported by the evidence in the
b-hebrew corpus? Are there any examples which contradict his proposal?

Thanks in advance for any help.

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James Christian Read - BSc Computer Science
http://www.lamie.org/hebrew Thesis 1 - Aleppo codex machine
translation
http://www.lamie.org/lad-sim.doc Thesis 2 - language acquisition
simulation


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