...
This is a restatement of your "observation" much differently than it was
before you investigated the numbers. In any case, I am glad you approve
of his numbers because as far as I can see, his numbers assume your
"observation" is false. ...
...
In other words, your "observation" was that there are very rare cases where
Shin/Sin pairs of words are homonyms as opposed to the "synonyms."
Peter's data assumes that all Shin/Sin pairs are homonyms. Furthermore,
Peter does not check your claim. To check your claim one has to calculate
some 230 values for each possible pair of two letters (alef-bet, alef-gimel,
and so on) to determine how likely is it that the interchange of the two
letters will give us a homonym. Then we check the Shin-Sin pair against
all other pairs. Well, I'm not going to do that.
...
When graphed, the data clearly show that there is a nice upwards curve.
Resh's data point appears way out there because there are so many
number of roots that have Resh in Peter's list. The question is: why is
there such a nice curve? why do the data for the letters cluster around
a curved line? ...
...Yitzhak, thanks for your clear reasoning on this. The data now clearly imply that there are sin-shin homonyms, because if all observed sin-shin pairs are simply variations of the same root the number of homonyms involving sin or shin is far too low.
That is, if one assumes as do you that Sin and Shin never describe a
difference
in meaning, one has trouble explaining that odd data point. If one
assumes that
Sin and Shin always describe a difference in meaning, as Peter did, then,
well,
isn't that reason to consider them unique phonemes?
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