Re:Ithkuil, the Most Complicated Language
by Garlef on Tuesday May 23, 2023 @11:10AM
(#36045417)
> has evolved to be compatible with our brain's language mechanism.
Under the hypothesis that there actually is such a "language mechanism": There would be a host of other mechanisms a language needs to compatible with - such as spoken and written word - that might have contributed adversarial constraints along the way (from the perspective of optimal adjustment of a language with respect to this mechanism).
Re:Ithkuil, the Most Complicated Language
by meepmorp on Tuesday May 23, 2023 @11:48AM
(#36046061)
There’s a whole strand of work in phonology (and other linguistics areas) called optimality theory, and the basic idea is that what you see in surface-level language is the the result of solving a competing constraints problem.
Under the hypothesis that there actually is such a "language mechanism": There would be a host of other mechanisms a language needs to compatible with - such as spoken and written word - that might have contributed adversarial constraints along the way (from the perspective of optimal adjustment of a language with respect to this mechanism).