The Linguistic Principle of Least Effort (P.L.E.)

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

PIER      DESEMBARCADERO, VARADERO

NEED   NECESITAR

FLOOD  INUNDACIÓN

FLASH  RELÁMPAGO
BURN   QUEMADURA

KNEE   RODILLA

HEAD   CABEZA

FIRST   PRIMERO

TENTH  DÉCIMO

STEW   ESTOFADO

LINED/WRINKLED   ARRUGADO

TOO  DEMASIADO

NOW   AHORA
LEFT   IZQUIERDA
RIGHT DERECHA

CHANCE   CASUALIDAD

FISH    PESCADO

VEAL   TERNERA
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.

Because of our common Latin and Greek  roots we share thousands of words with minimal changes (the important changes are phonetic):

CONCLUSION

DIVISION

TELEVISION

ACCUMULATION

ANTICIPATION

HUMILIATION

INSTALLATION

VARIATION

INTERRUPTION

PROTECTION

DICTATOR

INVESTIGATOR

MANIPULATOR

RADIATOR

TRAITOR

ACTIVITY

AFFINITY

CAPACITY

GRAVITY

MORTALITY

AMNESTY

ANATOMY

AUTONOMY

FANTASY

ZOOLOGY

FAMILY

AGENCY

ALLERGY

GALAXY

URGENCY

ABDOMEN

ALCOHOL

ALTAR

DEFICIT

CANAL

ACCENT

BASTARD

DIALOGUE

MODEL

MINUTE

FIND 5 MORE IN EACH CATEGORY

P.S. Try to think of any cases in which the opposite holds true: when Spanish words or phrases are shorter than their English equivalents. Exs: HOY versus TODAY,  MIL v. THOUSAND, Y v. AND...