Re: Iterative conlang design with corpus analysis, Or, Build one to throw away

On 4/18/06, Arthaey Angosii <arthaey@...> wrote:
> Emaelivpeith Larry Sulky 'sa <larrysulky@...>:
> > Jim, I didn't see anything in your post about "permutation density" (a
> > term I made up because I don't know what it's really called). By this
> > I'm referring to how many possible roots of a given form are actually
> > used. For example, if you give definitions to 70% of the possible CV
> > words (assuming those are possible words), then the permutation
> > density there is 70%. Would you want to set some limits on permutation
> > density?  ---larry
>
> Do you (or anyone else) have figures for "permutation density" in
> natlangs? Wondering what the "happy median" is.
>
> --
> AA
> http://conlang.arthaey.com
>
It's hard to do for natlangs since they don't generally have
proscribed word forms. But it could be estimated. For English, for
example, we could pick CV words and let V stand for any phonemic vowel
sound in English and C represent any consonant including <w> and <y>.

I might do this when I'm more awake.

---larry

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