THE
LINGUISTIC PRINCIPLES of LEAST EFFORT (P.L.E.)
Looking
back mine has been both a very serious and important job and I have dedicated my life
wholeheartedly to it.
I am
vocational whereas I´ve found few of my colleagues were” vacational” civil
servants who followed roughly the Principles of Least Effort (P.L.E.) (How ironically close to P.E.L.-Portfolio Europeo de Lenguas-!!) which equals the human principle of least action and
movement.
Applications
of Zipf's Law
"Zipf's
law is useful as a rough description of the frequency distribution of words in
human languages: there are a few very common words, a middling number of medium
frequency words, and many low frequency words. [G.K.] Zipf saw in this a deep
significance.
According
to his theory both the speaker and the hearer are trying to minimize their
effort. The speaker's effort is conserved by having a small vocabulary of
common words and the hearer's effort is lessened by having a large vocabulary
of individually rarer words (so that messages are less ambiguous). The
maximally economical compromise between these competing needs is argued to be
the kind of reciprocal relationship between frequency and rank that appears in
the data supporting Zipf's law." One explanation for linguistic change is
the principle of least effort. According to this principle, language changes
because speakers are 'sloppy' and simplify their speech in various ways.
Accordingly, abbreviated forms like math for mathematics and plane for airplane
arise. Going to becomes gonna because the latter has two fewer phonemes to
articulate. . . . On the morphological level, speakers use showed instead of
shown as the past participle of show so that they will have one less irregular
verb form to remember."The principle of least effort is an adequate
explanation for many isolated changes, such as the reduction of God be with you
to good-bye, and it probably plays an important role in most systemic changes,
such as the loss of inflections in English.
As I´ve
pointed out before English is a language of monosyllables (Entry 190 in my
blog)
Why, you
may wonder , is monosyllable such a long word?
Part of the
international success of English is due to its simplicity and the triumph of
the linguistic law of least effort. The 100 essential words to learn are
monosyllabic:
Just by way
of comparison see the words below and in a direct contrast between English and Spanish decide which option to choose:
ENGLISH SPANISH
ENGLISH SPANISH
PIER
DESEMBARCADERO, VARADERO
NEED NECESITAR
FLOOD INUNDACIÓN
FLASH RELÁMPAGO
BURN QUEMADURA
BURN QUEMADURA
KNEE RODILLA
HEAD CABEZA
FIRST PRIMERO
TENTH DÉCIMO
STEW ESTOFADO
LINED/WRINKLED
ARRUGADO
TOO DEMASIADO
NOW AHORA
LEFT IZQUIERDA
RIGHT DERECHA
LEFT IZQUIERDA
RIGHT DERECHA
CHANCE CASUALIDAD
FISH PESCADO
VEAL TERNERA
STORK CIGÜEÑA
STORK CIGÜEÑA
TOAST TOSTADA/tostÁ
CARROT ZANAHORIA
CLAP APLAUDIR
KNIGHT CABALLERO
FAN VENTILADOR/
ABANICO
SCRATCH ARAÑAZO
TYRE NEUMÁTICO
BOOT MALETERO
BUMPER PARACHOQUES
DIPSTICK VARILLA DEL
ACEITE
Write ten
more examples to show how a monosyllabic English word equals a longer Spanish
word.
