Re[6]: [tied] Re: *kap-

At 7:04:30 PM on Sunday, October 2, 2005, Grzegorz
Jagodzinski wrote:

> Once again, the popular view that the term Zipf's law
> refers to the observation that the frequency of use of the
> nth-most-frequently-used word in any natural language is
> approximately 1/n is false.

No, it isn't. I won't waste more time arguing; you're
wrong, and if you continue to misuse the term <Zipf's Law>,
you'll continue to confuse people who know what Zipf's Law
is, but that's your problem, not mine.

[...]

>>>> In any case, both of these are empirical descriptions,
>>>> so neither can say that anything *must* happen.

>>> All laws are descriptive, contrary to theories whose aim
>>> is to answer the question "why". However, laws also
>>> *require* things to happen so-and-so, in order to
>>> satisfy what the laws say. As Newton's law requires
>>> apples to fall onto the ground, so Zipf's law requires
>>> frequent words to be shortened (if they are too long).
>>> Both things *must* happen.

>> Don't be ridiculous. 'The length of a word tends to bear
>> an inverse relationship to its relative frequency'
>> doesn't require anything of any specific word; it's a
>> vague, qualitative description of a lexicon.

> It is only your, ridiculous understanding, nothing more.
> How do you understand the verb "tend" here? Sorry but if
> you say that the statement "the length tends" is a vague
> description, it is ridiculous.

Not in the least. 'Tends' admits any number of exceptions
and gives no indication of the precise nature of the
relationship. Example: human weight tends to increase with
height. This is a true statement, but everyone is familiar
with numerous exceptions, and the statement gives no
indication of the mathematical nature of the relationship.
I can only guess that you're giving 'tends' a meaning that
it doesn't actually have in English, though your English is
generally rather good; otherwise your last sentence above is
incomprehensible.

Brian