4 ms·
>I'm not convinced by reason #1 because words are distinct even in speech. No matter how fast or continuous your speech when you say, "The dog jumped", everyone
by falcor84 8y ago
>I'm not convinced by reason #1 because words are distinct even in speech. No matter how fast or continuous your speech when you say, "The dog jumped", everyone will agree that "dog" is a distinct thing, even if you're illiterate.
Segmenting words is actually a quite complex cognitive task that takes a while to acquire, usually considered in the framework of statistical learning[0].
Another aspect here is that the concept of a word is somewhat fuzzy, with compound words[1] emerging quite naturally, particularly in some languages. For relatively recent examples of compounds in English, consider "website" and "cellphone" (both of which are now, as a separate step, gradually becoming the default meanings of "site" and "phone").
So I don't find it too surprising that once upon a time word segmentation was even more flexible.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_learning_in_language_acquisition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_learning_in_langua...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compound_(linguistics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compound_(linguistics)
- skummetmaelk 8y agoIf you listen to people speaking in a language you do not understand it can be _very_ hard to pick out the space between individual words. When learning a language your brain learns to artificially break up the almost continuous stream of sound into distinct words.
- wintermutesGhst 8y agoI notice this on occasion when people are speaking a language I do understand, but I miss a syllable or two when they begin speaking. The rest of their speech might as well be another language as it all runs together incomprehensibly. I cannot parse the whole sentence after missing the prompt at the beginning, and cannot even separate where the words split.