On 18/01/2007 19:46, K Randolph wrote:
> ...
> Notice that the shin has the second lowest multiple. The sin and shin
> together have a multiple still on the low side of the average of 1.784
> (taken from the total row).
>
>
And sin has the highest multiple.
... You can't win that way. Also you can'tI realize that. I was looking for a ballpark figure.
put sin and shin together in these statistics by simple addition, so
your added calculation is not valid - although in practice I accept that
sin and shin taken together would fall in the middle of the range, if
you accept sin-shin pairs as real homonyms.
> Even though I disagree with the lexicographic method, the results seemI don't have the full figures. Based on a random spot check of fewer
> to imply even stronger than defining by action that the sin and shin
> together were originally one letter. (Defining according to action
> gives an observed frequency closer to the predicted numbers than to
> the "observed" frequency from your received list.)
>
>
I would be interested in your statistics on the number of homonym for
each letter defined "by action". I assume that you have these numbers as
without them you could not observe a frequency.
> To repeat my original observation, I noticed that sin and shinThe reason you started your analysis is because I noted that I had
> together are observed to have a lower frequency of homonyms than
> expected, especially lower than expected if they were originally two
> phonemes. That, along with other clues, caused me to raise the
> question, were they originally one phoneme with one letter to
> represent that one phoneme?
>
>
Well, let us see the statistics on which you based your original
observation.
My calculations suggest that the distribution of verb roots isThis is making assumptions. If consonantal phonemes were randomly
essentially random over the space of possible three letter roots, with
no special constraint on duplicates. The implication of this is that
there would be no difference in the frequency of homonyms between simple
letters and those which were originally multiple letters; and thus that
this method of counting homonyms is not helpful in deciding whether sin
and shin were originally separate.
A bit more analysis....Sorry, but I didn't understand it.
--One question I want to know: starting with 1615 three letter verb
Peter Kirk
E-mail: peter AT qaya.org
Blog: http://speakertruth.blogspot.com/
Website: http://www.qaya.org/
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