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Conference thebay::joyoflex

Title:	The Joy of Lex
Notice:	A Notes File even your grammar could love
Moderator:	THEBAY::SYSTEM

Created:	Fri Feb 28 1986
Last Modified:	Mon Jun 02 1997
Last Successful Update:	Fri Jun 06 1997
Number of topics:	1192
Total number of notes:	42769

1166.0. "low coding efficiency in English" by STARCH::HAGERMAN (Flames to /dev/null) Sun Mar 31 1996 21:06

    How come it's required that "new" words be invented all the time (in
    English) when there are so many potential words that could be made
    using the existing unspoken word-formation rules? For example, "fleam"
    is a perfectly good word but just doesn't seem to mean anything
    (apologies if it does, but you know what I mean). Certainly Lewis
    Carroll, Dr. Suess, and Pogo got good mileage out of them, but is there
    something more fundamental going on here language-wise?
    
    It strikes me that we have make sparse use of the available word set.
    Perhaps it wouldn't be a natural language if all those were used?
    
    Example using the ending "-leam":
    
    bleam	available
    cleam	available
    dleam	(awkward to pronounce)
    fleam	available
    gleam	in use
    kleam	germanic
    mleam	awkward
    nleam	awkward
    pleam	available
    sleam	available
    tleam	awkward
    
    Why this low (20%) coding efficiency?
    
    Doug.

T.R	Title	User	Personal Name	Date	Lines
1166.1		BBRDGE::LOVELL	� l'eau; c'est l'heure	`Mon Apr 01 1996 07:13`	13
	Ha! fun to see some word-monger maths cropping up in here again. I agree - we have way too low utilisation of the pronouncable spectrum and it is criminal in this day and age of coporate and social economy. We should not wantonly shun perfectly useful constructions like "kleam". Dr. Seuss' books were childhood favourites and I can still remember many of the short fantasy names he(she?) invented. I have a vested interest in your desire to keep the tokens short as this will make my lifetime maths hobby much simpler (see 963.7 onwards). /Chris.
1166.2	LARGE :-)	SMURF::BINDER	Uva uvam vivendo variat	`Mon Apr 01 1996 09:32`	9
	Re basenote > fleam available BZZZZT! You should submit your design to a more thorough code review to ensure that you do not pollute existing namespace. A fleam is the cutting implement used in surgical bloodletting: an extended instance of which, I fancy, may be the procedure best suited to Orwellian folk such as you appear to be.
1166.3		STARCH::HAGERMAN	Flames to /dev/null	`Mon Apr 01 1996 11:59`	5
	Why start using 7 letter words where there are perfectly good 6 letter words not assigned yet? Seems simple enough to me. Who's in charge of this language, anyway? Maybe I should move to France... Doug.
1166.4		PRSSOS::MAILLARD	Denis MAILLARD	`Mon Apr 01 1996 23:48`	6
	Re .0 and following: for something slightly similar (how to put to use the completely useless words that pollute the road signs of the British countryside), see "The Meaning of Liff" and "The Deeper Meaning of Liff" by Douglas ADAMS and another guy whose name escapes me at the moment. Denis.
1166.5		DRDAN::KALIKOW	DIGITAL=DEC; Reclaim the Name&Glory!	`Tue Apr 02 1996 08:23`	6
	Further to .2, "fleam" is already taken in my family -- it's the shortened-by-Whorf's Law version of "Flea Market," a fun instantiation of which can be found in Wellfleet, MA of a Sunday summer afternoon. HTH.
1166.6		BBRDGE::LOVELL	� l'eau; c'est l'heure	`Wed Apr 03 1996 12:36`	14
	re .3 Unfortunatley it is much, much worse here in France. This is a social epidemic of truly global scale and the French are not to be outdone by you anglophone amateurs. Not only do the French have low encoding ratios for their words, they have high word-to-concept ratios. e.g. take a simple word like "jet" and the officially blessed French version = "avion a reaction" or another very simple (again slightly ambiguous) word like "tart" and the (now rather unofficial) French version = "Marie-couche-toi-la". mes 2 centimes, /Chris.