Re: Word length as a function of word frequency

Sally:
> Dear Dirk,
>
> Can you explain your beautiful chart below in layman's terms?  I'm unsure
> what a "segment" is as distinguished from a syllable, or how we are to read
> the chart.
(is it more polite to let Dirk answer, or to not ignore the question?)

Segment = phoneme, very roughly.

> Also. what linguistic rule has observed that the more frequent
> word tends to be the shorter one?   More Anglophones will say or write the
> words advertisement, conversation, and peculiarly than they will say or
> write fop, doff, and dap.
Frequent words tend to be shorter. But AFAIK it is not the case that
shorter words tend to be frequent. Hence "advertisement" gets
shortened to "advert" and "ad". ("Conversation" doesn't get clipped,
but perhaps we compensate by using plesionyms like "chat" and "talk".)

> I was once told by a non-linguist, who thought he knew something on the
> subject, that I should make sure that my "function" words in Teonaht were
> monosyllabic; that it was a linguistic rule that function words and pronouns
> were short, across the board.  I was tremendously skeptical, even though I
> had already made sure of that years ago--for Teonaht.  It was the "across
> the board" remark that cooled me
I'm sure you know better than your would-be advisor. If there is a
tendency for function words to be shorter, it is because (a) frequency
begets shortness and (b) information-poor words tend to be unstressed,
function words are information-poor, and lack of stress begets phonological
reduction and hence shortening.

> Most Teonaht words are two syllables, a few words are five syllables, very
> few longer than that.  Tatilynakose, "disgusting," is one of my very early
> words, and I can't for the life of me get rid of it.  It's very frequently
> used. :)  Erahenahil means "paradise," and that one, too, is pretty common
There must be countervailing factors that resist shortening. Such as
expressiveness; you show how very disgusting something is by devoting
extra syllables to doing so. As for "Erahenahil", I conjecture that
words for sacred things are more resistant to shortening, since to
defile the name is to the defile the named.

All of which goes to show what we all say -- Teo is a living breathing
organic soulful language.

--And.

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