Phonetic Resemblance, Birthday Prob. Regular Sound change and Yakhontov

[Brian M. Scott]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
H. Mark Hubey wrote:

[snipped, and reformatted for legibility]

> 2. Suppose we are comparing two languages A and B; and we have a batch
> of candidate words. For simplicity let A and B have about 20 consonants
> each and let our comparison be a simple one of matching up consonants. There
> are 380 possible sound changes (ignoring the no-change). Naturally, we are
> looking for regular sound correspondence/change (RSC)

>         2.i) In the worst possible case, if we find 380 words with sound
>         changes, each one could be unique and hence there is no sign of
>         regularity. Thefore even in this worst case if we find 381 sound
>         changes, according to the Pigeonhole Principle of counting, there
>         will be at least one sound change that is repeated and hence
>         "regular" in this restricted sense.

It's a *repeated* sound change; it isn't regular in the linguistic
sense.  Indeed, the extreme situation that you describe can hardly fail
to be a clear example of lack of regularity, since each consonant will
be associated with every other consonant.

> The first conclusion we can draw is that what really counts (especially
> in languages like IE and AA for which plenty of samples exist going back
> thousands of years) is really "quantity" because if we find quantity we
> will find due to laws of probability "regular sound change".

Here again you're confusing repetition with regularity.

Brian M. Scott
Dept. of Mathematics
Cleveland State Univ.