Re: Diringer's "imprecision" and copy(-daiin) was: intercultural artefact

["John Grove" <John@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Jacques wrote:
 <snip..> > kiboko kikubwa kimoja = one (moja) big (kubwa) hippopotamus
> (boko). Nothing out of the ordinary if we spell it like that
> (which is the standard spelling). But if we separate the
> prefix ki-, we get: ki boko ki kubwa ki moja, and you know
> by now what this does to the "copy(-2)" statistics. I wonder
> if there is something there. In fact, I do not wonder, I am
> pretty sure that there is something there.

Couldn't this also apply to case endings? What if words ending in 'aiin' are
actually 'y'+ genitive plural, and maybe 'ain' is 'y'+ genitive singular...
Of course this doesn't answer the duplication issue, but if we're separating
'ki' prefixes maybe we can treat daiin as a suffix that has been
separated...

If 'dy' is a main classification of plants say...then a sub-class of 'dy'
would use the genitive case to say 'of the' dy-class. So, word+daiin+daiin
could be
word(s) of the dy-subclass of the dy-main-class...

shy.kcheey.daiin.cthol.chor.chokor
shy ('s OF THE).kcheey-dy.cthol.chor.chokor

cho.sho.chaiin.shaiin.daiin.qodaiin
cho.sho('s of the) chy-shy-dy(of the) qody.

qotcho.ytor.daiin.daiin.otchor.daiin.qo.darchor.do-
qotcho.('s of the)ytor-dy(of the)dy (of the)otchor-dy.qodarchor.do

John Grove.

> This, I think, is a much more relevant, much more potent,
> statistics than the entropy. The entropy, after all, is
> the theoretical minimal cost of transmitting a message
> assuming the knowledge of the frequency of the n-tuplets
> in the language of that message. This cost is (to me)
> evidently dependent upon how the message was encoded.
> Thus, if you have a language where long vowels are
> expressed by reduplication e.g. ariiki, its entropy
> will differ from that of the very same language with its
> long vowels are expressed by, say, capitalizing: arIki.
>
> I have just a gut feeling that this "copy(-n)" statistics,
> for lack of a better term, is much, much more informative.
>
>