Re: Natlang most similar to your conlang [WAS: Analyzing Ayeri's syntactic and voice alignment (long)]

Thanks for the comments, BP. The *category* would still be "M", but instead
of the features "a" and "i", you have "Green" or even just "g". Perhaps
instead of obligatorily replacing the older features, it can be left up to
the analyst to do so or to use the older ones. I was quite surprised to see
that Miapimoquitch only scored 2.43; I would have thought it would be
higher. And this tells me something about Miapimoquitch that I didn't know
before. So I think it is essential, for the "g" measure at least, to create
longer texts. If your language is only attested in inscriptions (for
example), then you will have no basis for determining a "g" score. But you
will likely also have little basis for determining "a" and "i" scores as
well, aside from your intuitions as the creator (but even then, your
intuitions can fail you; they did me in the case of Miapimoquitch).

Dirk

On Fri, Apr 4, 2008 at 8:49 AM, Benct Philip Jonsson <melroch@...>
wrote:

> I like the idea of a morph per word ratio, but I can see a couple of
> problems with it:
>
> * it should still be called M rather than anything based on Greenberg,
> please!
> * For a conlang which lacks longer texts it may be hard to calculate
> accurately.
>
> 2008/4/2, Dirk Elzinga <dirk.elzinga@...>:
> > Thanks, Philip.
> >
> > A couple of things occurred to me as I reread my deathless prose from
> 2003.
> > In that version of the Language Code, I have:
> >
> > M       morphology
> >         a       agglutinating (+/-)
> >         i       isolating (+/-)
> >
> > I think that these features can be replaced with a single feature, Green
> > (short for Greenberg). This feature is the ratio of morphs to words and
> is
> > expressed as a real number. For example, Miapimoquitch is 2.43. That is,
> on
> > average there are 2.43 morphs per word. I think this is a more accurate
> > reflection of the agglutinating/isolating dimension and isn't too hard
> to
> > figure out, given some amount of text. Joseph Greenberg, of typological
> > fame, proposed this (and other ratios) as a measure of morphological
> > typology.
> >
> > Also in this version of the Language Code, I claimed that English has 24
> > consonants and 9 vowels. For the record (which is also in the archives)
> this
> > is not correct, and should be more like 14 or 15 for American English
> and
> > 19-22 for British English. Consult the archives for a nice little
> discussion
> > of this.
> >
> > Dirk
> >
> > On Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 8:55 AM, Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > On Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 3:42 PM, Dirk Elzinga <dirk.elzinga@...>
> > > wrote:
> > > > Many years ago I proposed a "Language Code," which was intended to
> > > provide a
> > > >  typological profile for a given constructed or natural language. It
> > > should
> > > >  still be in the archives somewhere.
> > >
> > > Here's Take 4:
> http://archives.conlang.info/ge/suezhae/qhuevhunwhian.html
> > >
> > > Cheers,
> > > Philip
> > > --
> > > Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Miapimoquitch: Tcf Pt*p+++12,4(c)v(v/c) W* Mf+++h+++t*a2c*g*n4
> Sf++++argh
> > La----c++d++600
> >
>
>
> --
> / BP
>


--
Miapimoquitch: Tcf Pt*p+++12,4(c)v(v/c) W* Mf+++h+++t*a2c*g*n4 Sf++++argh
La----c++d++600

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