Why are certain words used so infrequently?

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janMato
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Why are certain words used so infrequently?

Post by janMato »

From 40,000+ words:

word -- occurance count -- percent of total words
kule 22 0.05%
esun 21 0.04%
unpa 18 0.04%
kala 17 0.03%
selo 11 0.02%
mu 10 0.02%

esun is probably underrepresented because it is a new word.
unpa is being treated like a cuss word (taboo words in a language with no words to spare!)
mu is kind of useless. I'm hard pressed to believe a fluent toki pona speaker would say mice, crickets and gorillas all say "mu" and using li mu, e mu, etc is still pretty avant garde.

That leaves kule kala and selo. In a language this small, wouldn't it follow that all words would get used a lot.

kule is especially troubling, because many people figure colors other than black and white are modifiers only, so kule should appear more often/as often than any single of the 3 colors.
janKipo
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Re: Why are certain words used so infrequently?

Post by janKipo »

Have you set up a comparable list for English, restricted to the tp words (or maybe word cluster)? I don't have much occasion to talk about color or colors nor about fish or skin or many other things for which there are tp words. That is, all this maybe corpus specific and, as the corpus grows, the distribution will rationalize and come to be more like that for other languages.
I like 'mu'; I use it to mean "talks nonsense" as well as the usual animal sounds. Why would mice say (a very high pitched) 'mu'? And gorillas a very low pitched one?
'unpa' need to expand a bit -- maybe in your direction as a general word for reproductive activity, maybe as a word for piston/cylinder action and thus all the various things that old style machines do.
Can you put up the complete stats as of now?
Kuti
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Re: Why are certain words used so infrequently?

Post by Kuti »

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janKipo
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Re: Why are certain words used so infrequently?

Post by janKipo »

Two separate sentences or is there a 'la' between?
janMato
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Re: Why are certain words used so infrequently?

Post by janMato »

soweli tomo mi li toki e nimi Miwa-miwa taso.
Last edited by janMato on Sat Jul 17, 2010 10:08 am, edited 1 time in total.
janKipo
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Re: Why are certain words used so infrequently?

Post by janKipo »

'toki e nimi Miwa-miwa taso' 'mu' is not meant to be onomatopoetic exactly, although it works for a surprising number of animals -- with a little creative vocalization (high-pitched and extended for cats, say).
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jan Josan
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Re: Why are certain words used so infrequently?

Post by jan Josan »

I think one good tp article on the vociferous mating rituals of aquatic pachyderms should bring those last four words in line.
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