Why aren't we spending more to optimizing it?
I mean we certainly have and it evolves on its own.... but such a fundamental component deserves more directed attention. Also fascinating is the role that emojis have played recently, as a form of written language. They transcend spoken languages unlike alphabets, yet their meaning is far less precise.
I think language has evolved and become more optimized over time, actually.
I agree for sure. It's just that it's happened in a highly distributed uncoordinated way (which is absolutely amazing in and of itself) and I wonder if some concerted effort could yield faster/better optimizations.
I'm not sure. My completely limited sense is that it could be pretty difficult to make drastic changes to entrenched language, given that cognition and language is very linked, and as Chomsky and others have argued, our brains have an intrinsic linguistic grammar that is common to all known human language. That said, I have only very recently started reading a little bit about linguistics and neurolonguistics, so I a barley know what I'm talking about here.
*neurolinguistics.
Like this? 😉
