Newsgroups: sci.lang
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!bb3.andrew.cmu.edu!newsfeed.pitt.edu!godot.cc.duq.edu!newsgate.duke.edu!agate!spool.mu.edu!uwm.edu!math.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!news.sprintlink.net!news-stk-200.sprintlink.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!in2.uu.net!psinntp!psinntp!psinntp!commpost!usenet
From: pardoej@lonnds.ml.com (Julian Pardoe LADS LDN X1428)
Subject: Re: Languages: Hard, Harder, Hardest
Message-ID: <DvMAzr.Eo8@tigadmin.ml.com>
Sender: usenet@tigadmin.ml.com (News Account)
Reply-To: pardoej@lonnds.ml.com
Organization: Merrill Lynch Europe
References: <4tnv52$6lj@nntp.sierra.net>
Date: Sun, 4 Aug 1996 14:31:02 GMT
Lines: 35

In article <4tnv52$6lj@nntp.sierra.net>, spynx@sierra.net (Jack Durst) writes:
-->: I think that one wants to count morphemes, not phonemes.  (Of, course
-->: deciding what counts as a morpheme will involve a degree of arbitariness.
-->: Is it <morpheme> or <morph><eme>? -- people seem to feel pretty free to attach
-->: the ending "-eme" to just about anything.)
-->
-->It's definitly <morph> as in <morph><ology> plus <eme> as in <phon><eme>.

Definitely?  I agree with you, but I'm not sure that a counter-case couldn't be
made.  Just because <morph> is a morpheme in classical Greek, I'm not sure that
makes it a morpheme in English.  I'd argue it is because English uses both
<morph> and <eme> fairly freely -- and did so before computer technology made
"morph" a verb and noun in its own right.  However I don't think the issue is-cut
and-dried.  Is "computer" one morpheme or two?  If one, what about "transputer"?
If two, what about "complain"?

Anyway, I think I've gone off the idea that using the morpheme-count as a measure of
the length of a text is better than using the word-count if we are trying to compare
languages and their complexity.  If we take a text in English and Esperanto we'll
find that the Esperanto text is a lot longer than the English one.  This is because
every noun, adjective and verb is marked as such.  For example (using "." to indicate
the boundaries of morpheme within words:
    The man   must   go   to the new   house  ( 8)
    La  vir.o dev.as ir.i al la  nov.a dom.o  (13)
The English is shorter but who is to say that it is less complex?  In Esperanto each
word is marked as to its grammatical role.  In English there is no such marking and
since verbs and nouns are pretty much interchangeable it is not even possible to
use a word's part of speech as an aid.  Ambiguities such as that in "Time flies" (verb +
noun or noun + verb?) are not possible in Esperanto.  Does that make it more or less
complex?  (Well, the form of the Esperanto sentence is more complex but the role-markers
make analysing it less complex.)

-- jP --


