Why Does Language Do As Well As It Does?
Given that: 1. Words can have multiple parts of speech – “on”, “bar” 2. Words can have many meanings- “bar”, “cut”, “run” 3. Prepositions change verb meaning – “cut up”, “cut off”, “cut down” 4. Phrases provide allusions, metaphors, idiom – “raise the bar” 5. Migrants come from other lands, where they learnt other facts in other languages The ability of language to be reasonably error-proof is extraordinary. Of course, the error rate climbs in an emergency or war. But we are using a dictionary containing a million words – won’t that be better?’ Dictionaries aren’t very useful – they give you the sense of a word using other words, but those...
