Re: where do so many tenses come from?

Am Tue, 04 Apr 2006 07:45:30 +0800 schrieb Lee Sau Dan:

"Herman" == Herman Rubin <hrubin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

Herman> It makes no such assumption. There is no requirement that
Herman> each sign gets the same length of code. And the best
Herman> encoding would use encodings for major groups of signs,
Herman> not for single signs. Computer compression algorithms do
Herman> not just attack single signs.

So, neither should you.

Herman> But it is still true that in general the larger the
Herman> alphabet the fewer characters will be needed. For speech,
Herman> the alphabet consists of the phonemes, or phoneme
Herman> combinations.

If you're considering also sequences of phonemes, then how do you
define "alphabet size" properly?

You can view the set of all sequences as an (infinite) alphabet.


Herman> The most efficient known oral method of communication is
Herman> by pitch, for those with perfect pitch.

I don't think so. Are you based that on the idea that there are
infinitely many pitches available? That's not a valid assumption.

Herman> It has occasionally been used for communication, but not
Herman> often.

Tone languages use pitch. And they're not rare. Which language is
spoken by the most people today? Does it use tones?

Do tone languages use mainly pitch itself, or mainly movement of pitch? How
many of the Cantonese (or Vietnamese) tones are straight pitches without
moving up or down? (This is a serious question, not rhetoric)

Joachim
.

Relevant Pages