...
>Given the 26-letter English alphabet and a word of a given length L, how
>many phonologically legal, pronounceable names can be constructed?
Well, Bruce, unless I miss my guess, you'll have to do the work
yourself, but it shouldn't be too arduous. You just have to follow
these steps (many of them will require you to make some decisions, such
as the length and nature of possible vowel sequences, and you'll no
doubt find out some interesting stuff along the way). (By the way,
check out some intro phonology texts -- eg, Giegerich -- for some ideas
on some of these questions).
1) characterize [or even list] all permissible intervocalic consonant
sequences;
2) characterize [or list] all permissible interconsonantal vowel
sequences;
3) characterize all permissible
a) word-initial consonant sequences; and
b) word-final consonant sequences [these may be rather different
than the answer to (1), or even than some subdivision of it]
4) characterize all permissible
a) word-initial vowel sequences; and
b) word-final vowel sequences [again, likely to be somewhat
different from (2).
Then, just start with (3a), followed by (2), followed by (1),
..., but ending with (3b) or (4b), according to the case at hand, for
one set of possible words. Likewise, start with (4a), followed by (1),
followed by (2), by (1), ... but ending with (3b) or (4b), ...
You get the idea. Not superelegant, but a simple program should
make it work, and you just add a counter, and in the morning when the
program is done, you just check the number on the counter. You really
don't want to look at the results, I'm sure, because they'd look pretty
bad (_I_ certainly wouldn't buy a medicine with most of the names that
would be produced).
Jim
James L. Fidelholtz e-mail: jfidel@siu.buap.mx
Maestri'a en Ciencias del Lenguaje
Instituto de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades
Beneme'rita Universidad Auto'noma de Puebla, ME'XICO