Comment by greggyb
3 years ago
Of course, we do use compound numbers in English.
A very common example is in threads for machined screw threads, e.g., 1/4-20. This is not a range of numbers spanning from 0.25 to 20.0, but rather a pair of numbers that define two metrics of a single thing, which combine to uniquely identify the thread.
Perhaps context is sufficient, but adding this to your examples gives us at least three scenarios where the single symbol would mean very different things with pairs of numbers: compounding, subtraction, and numerical ranges. If we add on the clause separation duties of the dashes mentioned in the article, we have four uses where a single symbol sits between two numbers and means entirely different things.
There's no shortage of mathematical notation and delimiting characters. Eg you could write your machine screws as .25+20i. Obviously you raise e to the power of your screw and you get a rotation rate in the complex plane, and a width of screw in the complex plane as well.
Compounding and numerical ops are basically never confused. Machine screw is the only one of these where its even plausible. Not that subtraction and range are ever ambiguous, but if they were just use "#1 - #n" to denote "the numbers 1/n being used as labels for some range of options, not as a numerical values".
All in all, we have plenty of characters. A minimal set of rules, minimal set of characters, rich in predictable patterns, is what makes for a good language. The existence of a whole slew of specialized characters, all basically indistinguishable and frankly unheard of to most, has to work hard to justify itself right to live on my keyboard. We have parenthesis, commas, colons both full and partial, brackets square and curvy, braces, slashes forward and back...More than enough permutations and code space for anyone's expressive needs. Why anyone would opt for more byzantine characters with more rules on top is beyond my imagination.
Then certainly we should remove those superfluous brackets. Commas suffice for parenthetical asides. Sentences already imply grouping. I am a bit upset at your use of double quotes above. After all, we have the single quote, which consumes half as many valuable pixels and does just as good a job of indicating quotation. Colons of any level of completion merely separate clauses, a task more than thoroughly covered by commas and periods. Context is, of course, a great disambiguator, so I see no reason to use any statement terminator besides a period. What possible confusion could arise.
While we are at it, we have so many words. Perhaps we should simplify to one of the several published standards of simplified English. After all, the number of combinations of a thousand words in sentences of arbitrary length is enormous. Why anyone would opt for more byzantine words with more nuanced definitions and rich history of usage, tradition, and cultural value is beyond me.
We could go on with grammar (I mean really, what the hell is pluperfect), spelling ('c', for example is useless on its own, its uses being filled alternately by k or s), fonts (wtf is a serif), capital and lowercase letters, and I am sure many other topics.
Why do we keep more words, punctuation, and other linguistic and typographical devices around than we need? A mix of inertia and legitimate uses and perceived value. It seems to me that many people seem to draw a line between what is acceptable and what is not based on whatever they are comfortable and familiar with by the time they reach the end of their schooling.
I know your examples are intentionally extreme to prove a point, I'm biting anyway.
Parenthetical type grammar with an explicit start character and end character is pivotal for encoding information unambiguously. You can't replicate that with any system that uses the same characters for the start and end, because it would be ambiguous as to if you are starting a nested context or ending the present one. Double, single, and even the rare triple quote allow for nested quotation. In principle a clean open and close quotation mark would also solve this (no subtle pixel hunting). You're right that we don't truly need four redundant variations on bracketing, but reducing it to just one is probably too few as it would be representing too many possible things at once. How about one pair for a narrative context (aka a quote), one pair for linguistic recursion (like I'm doing right now), one pair for collections of objects such as a list or a set. Colons probably could be skipped, everything beyond that is strawmanning me. A certain small number of delimiters / particles / whatever are needed to have expressive completeness. You need to be able to build sequential lists, unordered lists, one of several possibility sets, and / or / not type relations. In other words, a natural language at the very least needs some sort of regex subsystem, but it need not be much more more sophisticated than regex. I'm not a grammar denialist in fact quite the opposite. I want the information coded in simple grammar rules, not ad hoc arbitrary tables continually expanding.
I say this as someone who had a 12th grade vocabulary in 5th grade and its only gone up since, vocabulary is a waste of time.
Actually, I'm almost with you on 'c', but I'd rather throw out 'k' because its one of the few that don't fit on a 7 segment display. Capital letters also don't add much information. Yes actually, I'm fine with all of those going away. I couldn't tell you why the people who design way finding signage avoid serifs like a pox, yet other design fields refuse to read without them. With or without seems to read just fine. I really don't care too much either way. Letters would be better if they all worked more like EFHLT. Right now, too many clashing elements. Some are boxy, some are round, some have sharp diagonals. I'm not saying it has to be a 7 segment design, but it would certainly be pleasing if learning the alphabet, its ordering, how to write it, could all happen much faster by just noticing a few easy repeating patterns. Yes actually, lets do language reform.
>It seems to me that many people seem to draw a line between what is acceptable and what is not based on whatever they are comfortable and familiar with by the time they reach the end of their schooling.
Well I'll agree with you there. All to often pointless pedantry comes down to "my school must be right otherwise I am wrong". Love or hate my reasoning, at least you can't accuse me of doing that.
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But apparently only insufferable pedants care about clarity. That's why we should stop using those pointless number glyphs too and just write them out in unary using hyphens. -/------------------------- is just fine.
.... -.-- .--. .... . -. ... .- -. -.. .--. . .-. .. --- -.. .. ... .- .-.. .-.. .. -. . . -..