Eckhard Bick - VISL

alphabetical order allows the analyser to find word roots by binary search: 5 steps to
search 16 words, 6 steps to search 32 words, 17 steps to search the whole lexicon
(fig. 1). In analysing a particular word, multiple root searches are even faster: due to
the fact that cutting various endings or suffixes off a word does not touch word
initial letters, the remaining roots are alphabetically close to each other. So, having
found the first root by cutting the lexicon in halves 17 times, one can get near the
next root by a few "doubling up" steps from the first roots position. Normally this
takes less than 5-6 steps.
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