[CLUE-Talk] Looks like our brains match \w+

[Timothy C. Klein]

* Timothy C. Klein (teece at silverklein.net) wrote:
> I generally feel the way you do -- but our feelings are out of touch
> with reality. Language is a completely arbitrary construct. It is also
> a construct that evolves. The reason we have trouble with spelling
> in English is because our alphabet has 26 characters, but we have
> considerably more morphemes in the English language (something like 40,
						  ^^^^^^^^^
> or it might be around 100 if you add different stresses on vowels, longs
> a shorts, etc.) Thus the reason we see major problems with spelling

D'oh! I always make that mistake. 26 graphemes (letters), but around 40
or 100 _phonemes_, not morphemes. Morphemes are irreducible linguistic
elements that still have meaning, and we have a hell of a lot more
than 100. Phonemes are the phonetic units of sound that can convey a
distinction in meaning, like 'b' or 'th' or one of 18 different vowel
sounds (and your elementary school teacher taught you there were 5 ...)
:-)

Tim
--
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== Timothy Klein || teece at silver_NO-UCE_klein.net   ==
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== Hello_World.c: 17 Errors, 31 Warnings...         ==
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