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It's fascinating that while languages vary wildly by speaking speed, information transfer is fairly similar.
(lemmy.world)
this post was submitted on 01 Nov 2024
515 points (97.4% liked)
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Well I did clarify I agree that the overarching point of this paper is probably fine...
I am not a linguist so apologise for my ignorance about how things are usually done. (Also, thanks for educating me.) But on the other hand just because it is the accepted way doesn't mean it is right in this case. Especially when you consider the information rate is also calculated from syllables.
Ultimately this just measures how quickly the speaker can produce different combinations of sounds, which is definitely not what most people would envision when they hear "information in language". For linguists who are familiar with the methodology, this might be useful data. But the general public will just get the wrong idea and make baseless generalisations - as evidenced by comments under this post. All in all, this is bad science communication.
Perhaps, but to be clear, that's on The Economist, not the researchers or scholarship. Your criticisms are valid to point out, but they aren't likely to be significant enough to change anything meaningful in the final analysis. As far as the broad conclusions of the paper, I think the visualization works fine.
What you're asking for in terms of methods that will capture some of the granularity you reference would need to be a separate study. And that study would probably not be a corrective to this paper. Rather, it would serve to "color between the lines" that this study establishes.