Yeniseian and Na-Dene

[H.M.Hubey]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Johanna Nichols wrote:
>
> I've worked out the chances of finding words with two similar consonants in
> the same order, with similar but not necessarily identical meanings, in two
> languages.  Out of a fixed list of 100 meanings chosen in advance (this is
> analogous to asking "what is the probability that similar forms will mean
> 'water' in both languages?", and so on for another 99 glosses), this is how
> many resemblant sets it takes to exceed the range of chance and show that
> relatedness is likely:
>
> 2-consonant words with the very same meaning:   7
> 2-consonant words with similar meanings (modeling this as a search that
> allows up to 5 senses' leeway, e.g. for 'fly' also 'flee', 'wing', or
> whatever; these must also be specified in advance):  25
> 1-consonant words (or 2-consonant words with one resemblant consonant and
> one non-resemblant one) with the same meaning:  27
> 1-consonant words with 5 senses' leeway each:  over 50
 
 
I erased the rest not because it is not important but because I want to
ask about this.
 
Is it not true that the most important consideration in probability
theory is knowing the sample space?
 
In other words, when "matches" due to chance are being calculated,
should not the fact that the two languages have (or seem to have)
the same set of phonemes enter into the calculation? In other words,
the sample space should consist of the phonemes that the languages
could have had (along with the phonemes that they do have) but do not?
 
The calculations should involve conditional probabilities. No?
 
Secondly, I also made some calculations. But mine is not for phonemes
and does not take into account phonemes for the reason that they cause
more complications, and do not take into account that the same speech
space available for humanity is divided up differently and into
different
number of chunks (phonemes) in different languages. The fact that out of
possible M phonemes if languages seem to have a particular set of N
phonemes that in itself has to be accounted for.
 
--
Best Regards,
Mark
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