To corroborate this analysis, we numerically estimated the likelihood surfaces of expected datasets of increasing length, each composed of character state patterns at their expected frequencies given the Felsenstein-zone star tree in Fig. 1a.
Thus, to access the meaning of a word in print, which is often composed of multiple characters, the component characters need to be recognized without the kind of immediate phonological clues available as in the case of words in alphabetic languages.
We also added a new character to the data set, resulting in a modified data matrix composed of 413 characters and 78 taxa (following the a priori pruning of the following operational taxonomic units [OTUs] that were also excluded by Nesbitt [ 2]: Archosaurus rossicus, Prestosuchus chiniquensis, UFRGS 0156 T, UFRGS 0152 T, Lewisuchus admixtus and Pseudolagosuchus major).
The joke is that the Chinese word for hand dryer is composed of three characters, "hong shou ji" (I am using pinyin, a system of Romanization used in China, to "write" the characters in the English alphabet).
(Politicians and pundits, please note: the Chinese word for "crisis" is not composed of the characters for "danger" and "opportunity").
The authorities would do well to remember that the word crisis, when written in Mandarin Chinese, is composed of two characters: one represents danger, the other opportunity.
Whenever I think of a crisis, I remember John F. Kennedy's wise words, "When written in Chinese, the word 'crisis' is composed of two characters - one represents change and the other represents opportunity".
