Re: [tied] Linguistic measurements

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Paul Alesu <rpales@...> wrote:

>
> It seems to me that the "linguistic distance" should be the same

even if

> the "linguistic effort" may be different. It's harder to walk the

same

> distance uphill than downhill.
> The asymmetric "linguistic effort" by itself should not make

defining a

> "linguistic distance" impossible.
>
> Paul Alesu
>
> > [Miguel] it's easy for a Portuguese-speaker to understand

Spanish, but

> > for an untrained Spanish-speaker, it's relatively difficult to
> > understand Portuguese.
> > ----

Taking the greater of the two distances is a perfectly reasonable
approach, though its probably more interesting to work with the
asymmetric measure as far as one can. However, we still haven't come
up with a way of quantifying the distance.

Do we want to look at dialect distance or language distance. For
example, assuming Danish and Portuguese are mutually
incomprehensible, and likewise Danish and Chinese, do we want to say
Danish is equally incomprehensible from both? (This is a thought
experiment; I'm sure they have some English words in common - TV, OK,
video and coca cola all strike me as possibilities. :-)

Richard.