The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

[Jorge_Stolfi]

We can’t apply this to anything; for now, it’s just a coincidence.

Indeed its a coincidence.  Or several coincidences, maybe a couple  hundred.

But the word "coincidence" means just "to fall on the same spot" or "to happen on the same time" etc.  It does not imply anything about its cause, or whether the cause is relevant to one's purpose.   To say that the cause is irrelevant you must qualify "meaningless coincidence" or something like that.

Are the 主 <-> daiin coincidences meaningless?  To say that, you would have to compute the probability of they happening if the positions of 主 in the SBJ and the positions of daiin in the SPS were due to two unconnected processes with suitable probability distributions.  Have you computed that probability?

In the VMS text, there are cases where daiin is repeated twice. So, these excerpts should be read as “take for take for?”

The spoken English word "to" can have several very different meanings -- including the preposition "towards", the number 2, the adverb "also", and a verb prefix to make the the infinitive form.  In the sentence "Give two bucks to guard 1 and two to 2 to get in", there are four "to"s in a row.   Should they be parsed as "... and 2 2 2 2 get in"?

All the best, --stolfi