From d.gudlat@rpluss.com Fri Sep 01 07:52:03 2000 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 2946 invoked from network); 1 Sep 2000 14:52:02 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.142) by m3.onelist.org with QMQP; 1 Sep 2000 14:52:02 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO smtp.www-service.de) (212.77.161.16) by mta3 with SMTP; 1 Sep 2000 14:52:02 -0000 Received: (qmail 7473 invoked from network); 1 Sep 2000 14:51:58 -0000 Received: from p3e9eb664.dip.t-dialin.net (HELO frilix.rus.ger.com) (62.158.182.100) by smtp.www-service.de with SMTP; 1 Sep 2000 14:51:58 -0000 Received: from kipnis (kipnis.rus.ger.com [193.27.25.34]) by frilix.rus.ger.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) with SMTP id QAA20302 for ; Fri, 1 Sep 2000 16:58:27 +0200 Message-ID: <026201c01423$21e2daa0$22191bc1@rus.ger.com> Reply-To: "Daniel Gudlat" To: Subject: Re: vowel counts Date: Fri, 1 Sep 2000 16:44:28 +0200 Organization: R+S Reengineering und Softwaredesign GmbH MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2014.211 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2014.211 From: "Daniel Gudlat" coi rodo .i la jildicnen cu cusku di'e > I wrote a short perl script to count the vowels in the gismu in the > official word list and it came up with this count: > > ending i = 448 > ending a = 335 > ending u = 251 > ending e = 158 > ending o = 150 > > midvowel a = 510 > midvowel i = 353 > midvowel u = 201 > midvowel e = 186 > midvowel o = 92 > > total a = 845 > total i = 801 > total u = 452 > total e = 344 > total o = 242 > > 'a' and 'i' win by a fair margin over the others... i wonder why that > is. Several possible reasons come to mind: a) vowel distribution in the source languages: I don't know anything about the vowel distribution in Chinese, Hindu or Russian, but Arab only has a, i, u, AFAIK. So this would tend to temper the English prevalence of e quite a bit, I imagine. b) maximal separation of sounds: As far as vowels are concerned, a and i (and u) are maximally separated and thus make for easier word recognition in noisy environments. So this may have been a design choice. c) Dipthongs: ai, ei, oi, and au are the lojban standard diphthongs and strongly favor i and a. Any other takers? -- Daniel Gudlat d.gudlat@rpluss.com "people who quote, unlike people who are quoted, are aware of what they are doing" the Lojban Reference Grammar (Online Version)