08-08-2024, 02:10 AM
I've been intrigued by the same question: word-final -ey vs. -dy (or in fact -edy).
First of all, word-final -y is so frequent that it almost carries no information. I am not aware of any letter in any language that is as superfluous. To a lesser extent this also goes for the extended ending -dy.
However, there are some surprising features. Let's look at words ending -o. These are not frequent, but also not that rare. Here are the most frequent ones (counts from the RF file version 1a).
With the exception of 'qo', all words also exist (and are usually frequent) with the 'o' replaced by 'y'.
Many of these words end in -eo (becoming -ey) but there is only one case where the word ends -do and this is the stand-alone word do. This holds for much longer than the 12 most frequent words above.
As usual, I do not know what it tells us, apart from the fact that it is a significant feature.
First of all, word-final -y is so frequent that it almost carries no information. I am not aware of any letter in any language that is as superfluous. To a lesser extent this also goes for the extended ending -dy.
However, there are some surprising features. Let's look at words ending -o. These are not frequent, but also not that rare. Here are the most frequent ones (counts from the RF file version 1a).
Code:
120 sho
112 o
74 cheo
73 cho
55 qo
45 sheo
20 qokeeo
19 lo
16 do
15 okeeo
14 okeo
13 oteo With the exception of 'qo', all words also exist (and are usually frequent) with the 'o' replaced by 'y'.
Many of these words end in -eo (becoming -ey) but there is only one case where the word ends -do and this is the stand-alone word do. This holds for much longer than the 12 most frequent words above.
As usual, I do not know what it tells us, apart from the fact that it is a significant feature.