Results of Poll by Email No. 20

        Yes, this is a week late. I've been busy as of late, and have been getting
very burned out. Although the poll isn't much work (it usually takes no more
than an hour to compile) it's yet another thing that weighs on my mind. I'm
going to try to make August as stress-free as possible, which means I'm
tossing out anything that has deadlines. So this will be the last poll until
September. But feel free to submit your ideas for poll questions; submissions
are always welcome.
        We had 33 responses to the question, "How large a vocabulary has your biggest
conlang achieved?"
        A. Words? What are words? (0 responses, 0%)
        B. Less than 25. (2 responses, 6%)
        C. Less than 50. (0 responses, 0%)
        D. Less than 100. (3 responses, 9%)
        E. Less than 250. (5 responses, 15%)
        F. Less than 500. (6 responses, 18%)
        G. Less than 1000. (3 responses, 9%)
        H. Less than 2500. (10 responses, 30%)
        I. Less than 5000. (1 response, 3%)
        J. Greater than 5000. (3 responses, 9%)

        Many had problems deciding what to answer, since their morphologies permitted
derivitives and all sorts of productive constructions. I decided to be
conservative and define a word as a definite dictionary entry, rather than as
a possibility; for instance, "antidisestablishmentarianism" would count as a
word, but "antiantiantimissile" would not. I'll let the list debate what the
true meaning of "a word" is.
        And now, a public service message from Irina: "H, about 1600 in fact before I
lost the whole database in the Great Computer Crash of March 2002. I'm slowly
building the difference between 1999 (~1100) and 2002 again from existing
texts and conlang postings." Remember, only you can prevent lost data (and
much heartache). Make backups regularly.
        Neat mathematics for the day: n / 33, where n is an integer less than 33,
produces an infinitely repetitive number. Try several numbers for yourself.
        Ok, that's all for this week. Poll by Email will return in September; in the
meantime, curb your cravings by creating more words!
        :Peter