Bloomfield 26: "sub-multiple"?

[Scott DeLancey]

A submultiple of X is an exact divisor of X,
something that will divide into X with no remainder.
Since any morpheme is made up of a whole number of
phonemes (at least in Bloomfield's model), the
total number of morphemes is a multiple of the
total number of phonemes. So the number of phonemes
is a submultiple of the number of words.

Scott DeLancey
Department of Linguistics 
1290 University of Oregon
Eugene, OR 97403-1290, USA

delancey at uoregon.edu
http://www.uoregon.edu/~delancey/prohp.html



On Wed, 26 Aug 2009, s.t. bischoff wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I've got a question about Bloomfield 1926 (A set of postulates for the
> science of language)...several times Bloomfield uses the term "sub-multiple"
> e.g.:
>
> 17. Assumption 5. The number of different phonemes in a language is a small
> *sub-multiple* of the number of forms.
> 28. Assumption 9. The number of constructions in a language is a small *
> sub-multiple* of the number of forms.
>
>
> Can anyone clarify for me what Bloomfield means by this term?
>
> Thanks,
> Shannon
>