🚀 go-pugleaf

Loren Petrich wrote:
> 
> In article <330235...@pass.wayne.edu>,
> Michael Edelman  <m...@pass.wayne.edu> wrote
> >Irregular spelling in English has nothing to do with path dependancy and
> >everything to do with shifts in pronounciation that spelling does not
> >track. Every english spelling was once regular, either in English or in
> >the root borrowed from another language. Pronounciations drift over
> >time, various dialects diverge, and yet the common spelling allows
> >speakers of these dialects to communicate via the written word with no
> >difficulty.


>         Path dependency, by any other name, is still path dependency.

Your English example, even if true, would not be a particularly good
one. In what way does it demonstrate path dependancy?

>         And lots of other languages have had those sorts of shifts, and
> their spelling is usually *much* better.

I'd like to hear your examples. Please name a few. 

I'd be surprised if you could, frankly; The counter examples just don't
exist. The only way to have a written system without phonological
irregularities is to have a purely ideographic system, which of course
would have no phonological componant at all. Of course, this has its own
flaws. If I tell 100 English speakers there's a word pronounced "flork",
every one of them will now how to spell it. But if you have a
non-phonological system, there's absolutely no way of communicating this
word to another person via writing.

But you've missed the critical argument. What you see as a fault- the
irregularity of English spelling- is not a flaw at all. As I noted, the
fact that English spelling has remained unchanged over time and
geographic range measn that speakers of phonologically very different
dialects can still communicate via a common written language. 

This is a great advantage of *not* having a purely phonological written
system. Such a system would be almost useless except over short time
periods and narrow areas.

> >'Path dependancy' just doesn't exist. Period.
> 
>         So this is the best of all possible worlds, right?

Straw man arguments don't cut it here. I don't think I or anyone has
made that claim.
 
>         The crucial question is why is something one thing and not
> another? Have we reached an absolute global optimum or not?
 
There is no way of determining what is an "absolute global optimum". How
could you define such a thing? You're stuck with the same circularity of
Darwin's notion of "fittest". 

But it *is* true that over time society as a whole tends to select the
for most efficient solutions. Hence English common law, which evolved
from case law. Individual decisions may be flawed, but over time the
solution tends to converge on an efficient solution.

--mike