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 Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry