Re: THEORY: Natural language change (was Re: Charlie and I)

Thomas R. Wier wrote:

> > ... and you can see how it starts to melt.
> Granted, but that's not what you said.
Well, I thought it was me. If someone else has been
speaking my words, though ... I pity them!

> You made a general comment about Ancient Roman
They were great generals and are unlikely to take offense,
being dead-like.

> and (supposed) modern Japanese spelling habits.
Since they are (presumed) alive, I will let them spell as they wish.

> Spelling and writing systems in
> general are abitrary assignations of sound to a graphical
> form.
Ahh ...

> the Chinese and Japanese -- cultures which
> for most of history were not only more populous but also richer
> and more literate than Europeans -- seemed to do well for millennia
> without it, and only introduced it at a time when the rest of their
> *spoken*  languages (statistically the hardest part of a language to
> impose changes on from the outside) were undergoing similar
> Westernization (supposedly, the current Chinese use of plural
> marking in pronouns is a direct result of their exposure to Western
> languages in which the distinction is obligatory).  In fact, the
> Roman (and early Chinese, and Japanese, etc.) system of
> doing things is in some ways more natural, since, like I said,
> no -- one -- breaks -- their -- spoken -- sentences -- up --
> into -- discrete -- segments -- when -- they're -- talking.
Yes. Except, we do.

> > So, I'm talking about attachment ambiguities.
> > Punctuation and intonation help a whole lot.
>
> But, if intonation is so important to remove ambiguity,
> how do we manage to understand each other (for the most
> part) just fine here in this forum?
Um, ... we don't, pardner.