vord-final [-ckhy]: curious statistics

[Emma May Smith]

I wouldn't regard [ckhy] as a word ending like [dy]. The ending [dy] can attach to word containing a bench gallows and they don't fit into the same position within words.

I believe the situation which you're calling attention to should be seen in the opposite way round: [ckh] doesn't occur as often at the start of words as might be expected. See the stats below:

[ckhy] 39
[ckh*] 196
[ockhy] 13
[chockhy] 21
[cheockhy] 10
[chckhy] 140
[checkhy] 47

[cthy] 111
[cth*] 498
[octhy] 10
[chocthy] 18
[cheocthy] 5
[chcthy] 79
[checthy] 28

All the situations where [ckh] is at the word start it is less than half as common than [cth]. While 50% of [cth] is at the word start, only 20% of [cth] is. Yet where it is internal [ckh] is at least as common as [cth] or even more so in pure number of tokens.

We see a similar but much weaker pattern with [k] and [t], and there are stronger patterns between these two, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. I think the answer is that the relationship between [k, ckh] and [t, cth] is more than simply being in the same glass of glyphs. They have related distributions which may be reflections of the underlying text.