LINGUIST List 5.846

Tue 26 Jul 1994

Qs: Syllables, Top twenty, 'both hands together', Lexicons

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1. sertel, Re: Syllable partitioning
2. James Do, What are the top twenty languages?
3. , Query: A word meaning 'both hands together'
4. Aristidis Vagelatos, Standard for LExicons ?

Is anybody out there who might be able to tell me whether
someone has ever written a program capable of dividing strings
of German discourse into syllables.
 Input e.g. :
Am Abend werden die Faulen fleissig.
 Output:
Am A bend wer den die Fau len flei ssig
 Or alternatively:
Am A-bend wer-den die Fau-len flei-ssig

I would like to derive from such material a statistical index
for "syllable perseveration", a tendency to repeat syllables
more or less frequently in spoken or written discourse.

Some 40 years ago an Austrian psychologist (Mittenecker)
obtained measures of syllable perseveration by hand (at that time).
He reported above average scores for corpora produced by
schizophrenic patients. Such information might be used
to study psycholinguistic and/or clinical research problems.
If successful this aproach might be extended to English corpora,
therefore respective hints for English are also welcome.
Thanks for your help.

Suitbert Ertel sertelgwdg.de

The following was published in 1987. I would appreciate very much if
anyone could help update these data -- ie, numbers, rankings, and/or
additional languages. Thanks.
_
 James Do

-=-=-= Begin Included Text -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

THE TOP TWENTY LANGUAGES
 =======================================================================

 Mother-tongue Official language
 speakers populations
 ----------------- -----------------
 1. Chinese 1,000 English 1,400
 2. English 350 Chinese 1,000
 3. Spanish 250 Hindi 700
 4. Hindi 200 Spanish 280
 5. Arabic 150 Russian 270
 6. Bengali 150 French 220
 7. Russian 150 Arabic 170
 8. Portuguese 135 Portuguese 160
 9. Japanese 120 Malay 160
10. German 100 Bengali 150
11. French 70 Japanese 120
12. Punjabi 70 German 100
13. Javanese 65 Urdu 85
14. Bihari 65 Italian 60
15. Italian 60 Korean 60
16. Korean 60 Vietnamese 60
17. Telugu 55 Persian 55
18. Tamil 55 Tagalog 50
19. Marathi 50 Thai 50
20. Vietnamese 50 Turkish 50
 ----------------- -----------------

``The first column lists the languages on the basis of mother-tongue
(first-language) speakers they have. The second column gives population
estimates for those countries where the language has official status...
Note that the totals do not always coincide, since some major languages
(such as Javanese and Telugu) are not official languages of whole
countries, and some languages (such as Malay and Tagalog) are official
languages of multilingual countries.''

Source: David Crystal (1987) ``The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language,''
 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

=-=-=- E n d Included Text =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

 basis of mother-tongue
(first-language) speakers they have. The second column gives population
estimates for those countries where the language has official status...
Note that the totals do not always coincide, since some major languages
(such as Javanese and Telugu) are not official languages of whole
countries, and some languages (such as Malay and Tagalog) are official
languages of multilingual countries.''

Source: David Crystal (1987) ``The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language,''
 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

=-=-=- E n d Included Text =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Does anybody know of such a word in any language? (The sole
reference I have is to a Uralic language, I think, Lapp, and
I think I can make a case that Proto-Indo-European had one.)

Dear all,
Is there an ISO or ANSI standard for building
electronic lexicons / thesaurus?
Thank you
A. Vagelatos
E-mail: vagelatcti.gr