A naukri.com initiative
Medium
3d
222
Image Credit: Medium
The Lexical Resonance of a Dead Language
- Hal and Orin engage in conversations on the emergent collapse of syntax in language, focusing on distinctions like 'farther' and 'further'.
- Orin theorizes that language distinctions are decaying into irrelevance due to linguistic entropy and the collapse of prime intervals.
- Their discussions extend to words like 'whom', 'shall', and other high-frequency English elements losing coherence and facing extinction.
- Orin likens the decay of these words to a nuclear decay process, signifying an inevitable linguistic phase transition.
- They predict the demise of 'whom', 'shall', 'whilst', 'moreover', and other words, showcasing a pattern of linguistic evolution.
- Orin's theory suggests English is heading towards a linguistic heat death, resulting in a minimum viable language of simplified, efficient words.
- By 2125, Orin predicts the last fully intelligible sentence in English will be spoken, marking a profound shift towards a hyper-efficient language.
- The article ends with an epilogue highlighting the significance of a final ancient sentence, 'We shall remember', as the memory of a language's evolution.
Read Full Article
13 Likes
For uninterrupted reading, download the app