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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] Zipf and B-Hebrew

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  • From: <pporta AT oham.net>
  • To: "biblical hebrew" <jcr.bhebrew AT gmail.com>, "b-hebrew" <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Zipf and B-Hebrew
  • Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 07:23:53 +0200

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.

______________


I'm afraid you should be more precise if you would like to get some answers to your question. Every human language has words with a single meaning and words with two, three... meanings. I think the true is that this fact is quite independent from speaker's and hearer's will: that is why the context is so necessary to make the meaning of a given word clear and unambiguous.

Let us consider
1. the noun )B: it means "father" everywhere in the Bible.
2. the noun N"BEL: --it means "skin-bottle" in 1Sa 1:24 and --it means "a musical instrument" in 1Sa 10:5
3. the verb XFBAL: --it means "to bind" in Ez 18:16 and --it means "to act corruptly" in Ne 1:7

And so on.

And this applies, I feel, to every human language: English, Russian, French... and Hebrew.

Perhaps you should make Zipf's law more understandable so that list members may show their thoughts.

Pere Porta
Barcelona (Spain)









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