Re: Optimum number of symbols

On Fri, 24 May 2002 19:31:37 -0400, Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...> wrote:

>"Mike S." wrote:
>> but a highly inflected language with alternating
>> stems probably would not be.
>
>I'm not sure alternating stems would necessarily be a problem unless
>they were the *only* thing that distinguished various forms.  The
>Japanese verb _kuru_ "to come", for example, has four stems, depending
>on the ending, ku-, ki-, ke-, or ko-, but all four are written with the
>same kanji, and you just have to know which one is intended.  If you
>have [come]-ru, you know it's _kuru_, if you have [come]-ta, it's
>_kita_, [come]-nai = konai, [come]-reba = kereba, etc.
>
>Of course, a case like English sing/sang/sung would be a bigger problem,
>unless you had a character (or perhaps some kind of diacritic?) that
>meant "past tense" or "past participle" (or whatever the relevant
>distinction is in that language).  Egyptian, IIRC, used 3 horizontal
>lines to show "plural", but I'm not sure if they had a single plural
>ending or not.
Yes, indeed this is the sort of example I had in mind.  Or Latin,
in which for each verb up to four stems need to be memorized
(present, infinitive, perfect, participle).  Notice also that the
Romans were not tempted to bother somehow capturing the underlying
morphemic unity in their orthography here: they simply spelt
as they heard it.  That's why I am not inclined to give as much
weight to the morphemic principle as some others in the group,
while freely conceding it does offer benefits at times.



>> Again, the claim here is relative easy
>> for *all* languages.  Only the alphabet fits in this category.
>
>I'm finding that you and I have gone from disagreeing to mostly
>agreeing.  :-)
I find the same thing :-)  The heart of my case has been from
the beginning the alphabet's unique flexibility.  However, I did
initially overstate the case of how that flexibility might lend
itself to overall optimality.


Regards