Maciamo said:
Don't forget that "the head" is a much more common expression than "my head" and can be used in expression where it is not refer to the physical head (eg. "the head of marketing", "the head teacher", etc.), where "my" cannot be used. The word "tete" in French is almost never used in another sense than the physical one.
Part I: Stats
Good point which I accept. Let me expound on it in detail in Part 2. I redid my google search; English figures by restricting to English language only; French "e circonflex" in French only, which gave me the following. (I got greater figures than yours, which is probably due to the web material growing.)
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"my head": 7,353,000 matches
"the head":
17,700,000 matches(1)
my/the = 0.42
"ma tête": 434,000 matches
"la tête":
2,420,000 matches(2)
ma/la = 0.18
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"in my head": 2,030,000 matches
"in the head": 1,820,000 matches
(in my)/(in the) = 1.12
"dans ma tête": 224,000 matches
"dans la tête": 477,000 matches
(dans ma)/(dans la) = 0.47
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"on my head": 443,000 matches
"on the head":1,500,000 matches
(on my)/(on the) = 0.30
"sur ma tête": 2,700 matches
"sur la tête": 422,000 matches
(sur ma)/(sur la) = 0.005
Again, the relative frequencies of "my/the" in English is consistently higher than those in French by a factor of 2.3-60. I have not taken into consideration the higher ratio for 'my head/the head,' which I will demonstrate below.
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Part II: Interpretation
Given that I am not allowed to use spectific wild card words (such as arbitrary verbs, or synonyms of "head, ??") in my search, this is how I interpret the serach result for "the head" and "la la tête." Let's say the extended uses of the word "head" were of a number x included in the underlined figure (1). The proportion 0.42 I am using was calcualated 7,353,000/17,700,000.
Now if I take away those extended uses of "head," how many true heads are left ? 17,700,700 less x. I have no easy way of getting the number x; let's suppose x is 7,700,000 for the time being. Then the adjusted proportion would be 7,353,000/10,000,000 = 0.74 for English.
If French does not have the extended use of "tête" within figure (2) that would mean the corresponding proportion for French would remain at 0.18 obtained by 434,000/2,420,000. The ratio between English and French would be 0.74:0.18 = 4.1:1 This means, English favors 'my' 4.1 times as much as French favors 'ma.'
Conclusion
Depending on the extended usage count x, the actual ratio figures will vary. But one thing for sure is that it will be greater than 2.3. This supports my thesis that English has unusually high occurrences of 'my' when compared to French 'ma.'