The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

[JoJo_Jost]

@ Stolfi.

I understand what you’re trying to say, but that completely misses the point. You're comparing apples to pears.

I found the “sh” prevalence in certain forms where the “xxx” following “sh” and “ch” is always the same, and you’re right, of course—perhaps these specific “xxx” word families account for the entire effect.

So if I remove them, the effect should either disappear or reverse.

That’s why you’re taking a set of endings whose removal reverses the overall ratio. You’re trying to show that the “sh” advantage isn’t distributed equally across the entire word inventory, but depends on which forms are considered.

But I never claimed that either.

And the crucial difference still remains:
- Your calculation: Which word families account for the overall difference?
- My calculation: What differences exist between “sh” and “ch” when the rest of the token structure remains identical.

And if you’re honest: Both can be correct at the same time.
Certain families can account for the overall effect, and within these families, “sh” can consistently have higher occurrence rates than “ch.”

The only thing your analysis shows is that a broader claim like “sh is generally higher everywhere” is refuted. But as I said, that’s not what I claimed in the first place.

However, you’re not refuting my actual finding regarding the matched form pairs under investigation. 

So you mean the “disagreement” is about this:

Is the shared character structure relevant to the distribution of successors, or does it reflect differences between specific words or word classes? Neither your calculation nor mine settles that question. And, sorry, I don't care about that at all.

But I'm concerned with something else: Is this phenomenon compatible with the Chinese one—and you haven't written anything about that yet...