--- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Wordingham"
<richard.wordingham@...> wrote:

>
> I worked out the frequencies of the various syllables in the Vai
>text
> in the VUP, trying (but failing) to filter out topic-related words
> like _Vai_, _kpolo_ and d_<eN. There was reasonable accord between
> the frequencies I got and what syllables appear in the 'Ndole
> syllabary'. About 80 different syllables are used in the Vai text
>in
> the proposal - text in illustrations and titles of references.

Here are the frequencies for the Vai text in WWS. It is an early
20th century private journal entry of 46 syllables, a very natural
text on a topic of the author's choice.

BA 2, MBE (spelled with BE) 2
KPE 1
FI 1
TI 1
DHE 1
LA 2, LOO 1, LU 1, LO 2, LE 1
DE 1, DI (spelled NDI) 1
SU 1
YE 1
KEE 1, KI 1, KA 1, KU 1, KE 2
HA 1
WA 1. WOO 1, WU 1
I 1, A 3,
MU~ 2, ME~ 1
NA~ 4
N~ 3

30 different syllables, 16 rows

Then I took 46 syllabes of the Cree text from the Cree chapter and
found that it represented only 24 out of 40 possible syllables.
However, 9 out of 10 rows were represented. In comparable frequency
checks on Tamil and English I found 90% of all possible consonant
values were represented in 46 syllables, (discounting Grantha
syllables for Tamil and discounting zh as in leisure for English.)

I won't be back home for a bit but I do have "The Psychology of
Literacy" by Scribner and Cole there and could check and see if they
display other texts. They must.

SIngler definitely says v and z are out with 3 rows of palatals.


The

> latter made a good warm-up exercise. (I didn't attempt to read the
> tombstone.) The Ndole syllabary has about 118 syllables. The

accord

> is not good for syllables starting with /h/, /w/ or vowellessly -

the

> system may have changed here.
>
> I therefore think gaps owe more to the rareness and importance of

the

> distinctions. The commonest vowel is /a/, and the Ndole syllabary
> chart shows a full set of contrasts here. Don't forget that the
> syllabary completely ignores tone distinctions.
>
> > Is it just me or does it seem easier to provide full rows for

each

> > consonant?
>
> It's easier to think that way, but I think it is generally the
> importance of the consonant contrast that determines whether there
> are/were different syllables. The distribution of syllables may
> depend on many historical quirks - initial consonant-vowel
> combinations in English certainly do.

Right initial position s very important.

Suzanne

>
> Richard.