Another Short History of Linguistics (46)

If alphabetic language study the number of sound and symbol then it will solved the information explosion issue easily but they believed that the language had a logical called grammar. In this way the alphabetic language took a totally different way.

To compare with the Phoenician language with European language we may find the former one missing vowel. Comparing Chinese language with European language we may find the difference between tone-language and non-tone-language. Here we repeat non-vowel-language or non-tone-language doesn’t mean their speakers don’t utter these phonetic element when speaking. The reality is that any language in the world has such elements but the Phoenician language doesn’t regard the vowel and tone as information carrier and European languages doesn’t regard tone as information carrier. We can counting consonants, vowels and tones as three different dimensions’ elements. Here I suggest the consonant as first dimension, vowel as second dimension and tone as the third dimension. As history tell us, higher dimension element always require more of human perceptions than the lower dimension element in sending and collecting information. I reckon, no one would feel sad, if his mother tongue has no vowel or tone, and no one would feel proud if his mother tongue has them, for all of us have done nothing about that, it is but the tradition.

From this easy to understand that why today, when information explosion start, the alphabetic language turned to be most vulnerable language. Because the designer of alphabetic language was designed it for a society with less information

The funny thing is that nearly all the linguists is looking for a method of special grammar to deal with the issue of large information. The grammar is in fact expecting using regular signals to express some irregular phenomenon while the growing up information quantity required irregular symbols to carry them.

We have talked, the radical in Chinese. It is an element of pictogram, although it represented no sound, but it can help to increase the utilization rate of sound in a language, we have said that in a language, the most important resource is species of sound. Of course what we mean to say is the SCAVs (a simultaneously combined action of all vocal organs), not the syllable. The unit syllable is a self-cheating unit, once you use such unit to explain questions, you will never make people and yourself clear, for it is some combination of sounds.

If a language with limited species of sound and use them lavishly then every word of this language will be longer in speaking, plus when the writing system changed from pictogram to alphabetic letter, it lost radical, the total number of sounds would felt deficit. For a remedy, the language like English using the voiceless consonant. At the beginning, all the consonant in Phoenician was a solid voiced consonant accompanied by a vowel, but as lack of adequate species of sound it required too many combination of sounds. People felt tire to do it and then uttered some of the unimportant consonant lightly. It is in fact violet the principle of alphabetic language, but they have no choice, step and step the lightly uttered consonant turned to be legal and regard as a new species of consonant, the target is no other than a greasiness of the already existed alphabetic system.