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From: dcs2e@darwin.clas.virginia.edu (David Swanson)
Subject: Re: Language difficulty/variation
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 <Dv26n8.5DM@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>  <4t8l1n$jb4@csu-b.csuohio.edu>
Date: Fri, 26 Jul 1996 04:03:27 GMT
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In article <4t8l1n$jb4@csu-b.csuohio.edu>
b.scott@bscott.async.csuohio.edu (Brian M. Scott) writes:

> In article <Dv26n8.5DM@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>, dcs2e@darwin.clas.virginia.edu (David Swanson) says:
> 
> >In article <4t4ra0$c61@news.ox.ac.uk>
> >patrick@gryphon.psych.ox.ac.uk (Patrick Juola) writes:
> 
> >> How do you measure "oral length"?  Time of utterance or number 
> >> of phonemes?  
> 
> >The latter.
> 
> Why?  The number of phonemes required to convey a given meaning is 
> likely to depend inversely and quite strongly on the number of 
> phonemes in the inventory.  The only moderating counter-influence 
> that comes to mind is the possibility that languages with large 
> phoneme inventories require more redundancy; I have no idea whether 
> there is any research on this.
> 
> Brian M. Scott

That all sounds right.  What's the problem?


David

"Heideggerian hope comes into question." J.D.
