RE: VMs: Proving Gibberish

[elvogt@xxxxxxxxxxx]

Zitat von Jacques Guy <jguy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:

> 17/08/2004 4:16:06 PM, elvogt@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> 
> 
> >I mean, yeah, doublets and triplets appear to be more common in the VM than
> in 
> >natural languages, but do their frequencies really exceed the mere
> statistics?
> 
> Such a test is meaningless. A natural language does not work by randomly
> drawing words from a dictionary. In many, reduplication is a way of
> expressing the plural. In Sumerian it can also express the superlative 
> and the aorist. Once again, I have given many examples of this.
> 
>

Hi Jacques --

"Appear" was the crucial word in my sentence.

Ie, "Is the doublet/triplet frequency really higher than one would expect on 
ground of statistics alone (for random sequences of words), or is it (= the 
apparent predominance of doublets/triplets) merely an 'optical illusion'?"

In other words, the "high repetition rate of words" is folklore on the VM, but 
how much of this is just visual appearance, and how much of this is hardcore 
statistics -- compared to random strings of words, or compared to real world 
languages?

Cheers,

   E.


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