synonymy vs. homonymy

[Pierre Abbat <phma@phma.optus.nu>]

I came upon a collection of writeups by Jim Hurford, one of which is 
called "Why Synonymy is Rare". He ran an experiment to find out why homonyms 
are common, even in languages which don't borrow from other languages, while 
synonyms are rare and are usually the result of borrowing. In Lojban 
homonymous brivla are forbidden, while synonyms exist, resulting from two 
people borrowing different words from another language or using different 
phrases to make lujvo. 
http://www.isrl.uiuc.edu/~amag/langev/author/jhurford.html

phma