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Sometimes the complexity doesn’t convey any new information. Some grammarian may correct me, but as an example, I don’t think verb conjugation within a tense a

Sometimes the complexity doesn’t convey any new information. Some grammarian may correct me, but as an example, I don’t think verb conjugation within a tense adds information for most verbs. I am/You are/He is/We are/They are could all be collapsed into just “[pronoun] is”. In fact, some regions/subcultures in the U.S. do do this.

eru 3y ago
The 'design' of language isn't all about conveying information in written form. A lot is also about what's easy to pronounce and hear. And, of course, also what's learnable for children. Compare http://fine.me.uk/Emonds/ http://fine.me.uk/Emonds/
codethief 3y ago
> Sometimes the complexity doesn’t convey any new information. It doesn't when you take a sentence as a whole but a more rigid grammar makes it easier to predict how e.g. the beginning of a sentence will continue. Put differently, entropy is lower. In my experience this allows for faster reading and understanding, and conveying information more accurately, as there will be fewer misunderstandings on average.
mcswell 3y ago
It's often (certainly not always!) the case that if a language has significant inflectional morphology (conjugation) for expressing person and maybe number of the subject (and for some languages, the direct and/or indirect object), then you don't need to use the pronouns, unless for emphasis. Spanish and Italian are like that.
Tor3 3y ago
English has a lot of redundancy. This is kind of complex, but it also means that you can do a lot of "mistakes" and still be understood. I believe that's one reason English has managed to become "the" international communication language (i.e. not only due to historical reasons): You can garble the language in many ways and still be understood, at least by people a bit used to this. In my experience as a traveler working in various countries, and always trying to learn a bit of the language to communicate locally, if the native has learned a little bit of English it'll always be more efficient in communication than whatever I've learned of the native language. And one reason is that due to the redundancy of English the meaning stays the same most of the time, even with tons of grammatical mistakes. "I is" is wrong, but fully comprehensible. Make a single mistake in, say, Italian, and instead of saying "I was stupid now" you're saying "You were stupid now". Argh.. And it's more - if you hear, in a noisy environment, ".... am drinking" then you know that the missed word would be "I". Again, redundancy. There's lots of that in my native language as well, where adjectives etc. changes depending on other factors. Miss out a word and you still get if the table or the tablecloth should be burned (to paraphrase another commenter about a completely different language).

eru 3y ago

The 'design' of language isn't all about conveying information in written form. A lot is also about what's easy to pronounce and hear. And, of course, also what's learnable for children. Compare http://fine.me.uk/Emonds/ http://fine.me.uk/Emonds/

codethief 3y ago

> Sometimes the complexity doesn’t convey any new information. It doesn't when you take a sentence as a whole but a more rigid grammar makes it easier to predict how e.g. the beginning of a sentence will continue. Put differently, entropy is lower. In my experience this allows for faster reading and understanding, and conveying information more accurately, as there will be fewer misunderstandings on average.

mcswell 3y ago

It's often (certainly not always!) the case that if a language has significant inflectional morphology (conjugation) for expressing person and maybe number of the subject (and for some languages, the direct and/or indirect object), then you don't need to use the pronouns, unless for emphasis. Spanish and Italian are like that.

Tor3 3y ago

English has a lot of redundancy. This is kind of complex, but it also means that you can do a lot of "mistakes" and still be understood. I believe that's one reason English has managed to become "the" international communication language (i.e. not only due to historical reasons): You can garble the language in many ways and still be understood, at least by people a bit used to this. In my experience as a traveler working in various countries, and always trying to learn a bit of the language to communicate locally, if the native has learned a little bit of English it'll always be more efficient in communication than whatever I've learned of the native language. And one reason is that due to the redundancy of English the meaning stays the same most of the time, even with tons of grammatical mistakes. "I is" is wrong, but fully comprehensible. Make a single mistake in, say, Italian, and instead of saying "I was stupid now" you're saying "You were stupid now". Argh.. And it's more - if you hear, in a noisy environment, ".... am drinking" then you know that the missed word would be "I". Again, redundancy. There's lots of that in my native language as well, where adjectives etc. changes depending on other factors. Miss out a word and you still get if the table or the tablecloth should be burned (to paraphrase another commenter about a completely different language).