THEORY: Storage Vs. Computation

Irregularity is a problem when a lot of language learning has to
happen under less than ideal conditions.

But surely it's not true that there is a unidirectional tendency
towards loss of irregularity?  If that were so, we'd all have
wondroudly regular languages by now.  I suspect that on the contrary
languages tend to lose irregularity and suppletion under stress (e.g.
a language becomes a trade language and a lot of people have to learn
as simple a form of it as they can get away with; Saxons get conquered
by Frenchmen and the language finds a happy medium; soldiers spread
Latin all over the empire and a lot of Gauls, Germans, and Dalmatians
try to talk to each other in it; that sort of thing) -- but in spite
of that they keep as much irregularity as they can get away with (e.g.
even English has a lot of irregular verbs and noun plurals), and it
grows back where it can, within ecological limits.

My opinion, of course, and I'm afraid perhaps not too topical, except
inasmuch as any understanding of how language works is helpful for
building them. :(  I'll throw a THEORY tag on this.

Ed Heil ------ edheil@postmark.net
--- http://purl.org/net/edheil ---

Nik Taylor wrote:

> Ed Heil wrote:
> > anything
> > that involves access to stored, pre-made patterns rather than repeated
> > computation is preferable as far as the brain is concerned.
>
> Then why do languages tend to lose those suppletions?  We've replaced
> the old irregular form "kyne" for the regular "cows", for instance.
>
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