Re: synthesis index (was: Of of)

Hi Pete,

On Tue, 4 Apr 2006 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,
> > > 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.
>
Wouldn't it, though!

A post on Zompist pointed to a message
on CONLANG by Dirk Elzinga, discussing
Greenberg's usages, which help somewhat
to distinguish agglutination from synthesis:
http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0309C&L=conlang&P=R27417

The synthesis index is there taken to be
the average number of morphemes per word.

Interestingly, Dirk wrote that he decides
"impressionistically" whether to call a
language "polysynthetic".  While I understand
where he's coming from, linguistics as science
does need objective measures.  The Greenberg
measure is obviously subject to where the
orthography chooses to place word boundaries.
I wonder if there's a better?

Regards,
Yahya

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