Re: synthesis index (was: Of of)

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,
> > and producing a family of related conlangs, all with the same phonology,
> > syntax and underlying vocabulary, but differing synthesis indices. I'm
> > planning to go from synthesis index 1 up to 8 in steps of 0.5.
>
>Hi Pete,
>
>
>Bickell's definition is:
>SYN = Nmax(categories) + Nmax(formatives)
>(page 159 of the latter reference), and he shows a
>map of its distribution for N (languages?) = 199 (page
>8 of the former reference) with values of SYN from
>0 to 28.
>
>Is this what you mean by "synthesis index"?  If so,
>is there any particular reason for stopping at 8, or
>could the process go on to 28?  Come to think of it,
>is there any a priori reason to prevent SYN from
>going even higher?
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.

Pete

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