Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yigal Levin <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il>]

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.
> >
> > -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > 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
> >
> >
> > -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > _______________________________________________
> > b-hebrew mailing list
> > b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
> > http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
> >
> >
> >
> > --
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> > 11/10/2007 15:09
>
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