Re: synthesis index (was: Of of)

On Tue, 4 Apr 2006 Jim Henry <...> wrote:
>
> On 4/4/06, Peter Bleackley <Peter.Bleackley@...> wrote:
> > staving Yahya Abdal-Aziz:
> > >On Mon, 3 Apr 2006 Peter Bleackley wrote:
> > >
> > > > A little background to this - at some point I'm thinking of
> translating a
> > > > lengthy text (most probably Tam Lin) into a isolating
> conlang. I will then
> > > > use a computer program to automatically fuse together the
> most commonly
> > > > occurring pairs of words, thus gradually increasing the
> synthesis index,
>
> > >Bickell's definition is:
> > >SYN = Nmax(categories) + Nmax(formatives)
>
> > I don't think that the definition given in your reference is
> what I mean.
> > By synthesis index I mean "Average number of morphemes per
> word". For this
> > definition, 1 is an entirely isolating language, and I think
> that 8 would
> > definitely be polysynthetic. 28 would be frightening.
>
> There were a couple of threads here on the CONLANG list in early
> December 2005
> about "agglutinativity index" and "synthesis index".  Some of
> those messages
> would have more specific references.   I think I transcribed a
> passage from
> J.C. Wells quoting J.H. Greenberg, and someone else may have cited
> Greenberg directly.
>
Jim,

Thanks for this.  I've already found, indirectly,
a post by Dirk Helzinga in an earlier thread (see
my reply to Pete onlist) which covers both the
synthetic index and an agglutinativity index à la
Greenberg.

Regards,
Yahya

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