Newsgroups: sci.lang
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From: hubey@pegasus.montclair.edu (H. M. Hubey)
Subject: Re: Nova
Message-ID: <hubey.789617233@pegasus.montclair.edu>
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References: <3e0308INNqvr@SUNED.ZOO.CS.YALE.EDU> <Pine.A32.3.91.950106200207.88725D-100000@isisa.oit.unc.edu> <3epmbj$94r@tardis.trl.OZ.AU> <3epv3h$n6l@msunews.cl.msu.edu>
Date: Mon, 9 Jan 1995 02:07:13 GMT
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fue@egr.msu.edu (uid no access) writes:

>should be more different with modern Mandarin before that. You
>cannot study "the origins of language" by simply looking up
>a (modern) Chinese-French dictionary.

>	   Zhouzi

Sure you can. The whole problem is that we believe that things
are not due to chance if the probability of it happening due 
to chance is too small to account for the number of 
occurrences.

If a strict match is required the average number of matches
between two languages due to chance is about 1. If we
stretch what we mean by "chance" to include "almost matches"
either phonologically or semantically the number increases.


--

Regards, Mark

hubey@amiga.montclair.edu
