綴字体系は,話し言葉の要素を完璧に写し取っている必要はない.母語話者にとっては,それは話し言葉のヒントを与えさえすれば十分である.敷衍していえば,綴字体系は母語話者のためにあり,母語話者のために発達してきたのである.言語とは本来的にそのようなものだ.
Lass and Laing は,綴字体系の不完全性と余剰性について,"A spelling system is a mnemonic for native speakers." と喝破している.
A spelling system is a mnemonic for native speakers. . . . [A] literate native speaker can routinely understand spellings that may seem strikingly 'defective'.21 All spelling systems have built-in redundancy, and interpretation of even bizarre spellings is possible as long as the reader knows the system and has a good idea in advance of what a word is likely to be, or what the range of choices is. In the present context, no reader who knows English would have any difficulty reconstituting the defective representations <spllng> or <rthgrphc>.
21 For instance, the Cypriot syllabary failed to represent half the vowels and two-thirds of the consonantal contrasts . . . ; and Latin did not represent vowel length, which means that roughly half of the possible graphic word-forms available were potentially ambiguous.
これは,非英語母語話者が英語の綴字を評価する際に忘れてはならない点である.英語を非母語話者として学んでいる私たちは,しばしば英語の綴字に欠点が多いことをぼやく.しかし,それもそのはずで,英語の綴字体系は,英語母語話者のために解読できるだけの最低限のヒントを与えさえすればよい,というほどの原理で発達してきたのだ.そもそも非母語話者の存在は念頭に置かれていない.
・ Lass, Roger and Margaret Laing. "Interpreting Middle English." Chapter 2 of "A Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English: Introduction." Available online at http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/ihd/laeme2/laeme_intro_ch2.html .
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