21-09-2017, 06:23 PM
Quote:Were [o] a noun marker then there would be a high number of words starting [o] which don't take [q] frequently. For example, many words starting [ol] occur but have low rates of [q]. Furthermore, we would still be left with a problem as [ch, sh] don't even take [o] often.
Not sure if I understand your point correctly. Do you mean, e.g., that we have olor, but do not have qolor?
While qo- is the overwhelming prefix containing q (count of 5289), next to that are qe and qc (66 and 23, respectively). So maybe that's a set of function elements, with qo- being the most predominant of them.
Anyway, I definitely like that idea about q. The point about it is that not only it is infrequent in labels, but also that it is much more frequent in Currier B. But that might be explained by the nature of the texts of biological and recipe sections which just might require "and" quite often. I wonder whether there is any difference in q frequency between botanical A and botanical B.