From: Dawsonzhu@aol.com
Date: Tue Nov 19 2002 - 11:54:29 EST
Glenn Morton wrote:
> But one must realize that the assignment of symbols to a given sound
> is merely an accident of history. In alternative histories, it would be
> quite possible that the above sequence would be readable and the lower
> looking random. Because of this there is no objective definition of design.
>
Glenn, I think we would have a lot of trouble
pronouncing "xfbtfm". <grin>
But on a bit more of a serious note, I would
expect that there are constraints on natural
language that restrict the types of sound
constructions that can be made.
There are also
factors like the laziness of the tongue so
some regional accents (like mine) say "wash"
as "warsh". If you pay attention to the glide
of the tongue, and you don't stop the flow of
air as you move from "wa" to "sh", you will find
your tongue passing through the region where the
sound "r" comes out. Likewise, in Greek the
letter "Beta" is now pronounced "veta". That is
because "b" and "v" involve similar positions
of the lips. So not only the types of sounds
but even their direction of alteration (mutation)
will tend toward rules of efficiency (I suspect).
So the short form is that I think there are restrictions that limit
what sorts of letter
sequences will be allowed in natural language.
To take this a bit further....
Frankly, I'm not as convinced that _any_ old
amino acid sequence will give you a functional
protein is some relative context either. I
think the problem is that the thermodynamics
of protein folding have been badly mucked up.
When you get the thermodynamics right, you also
start getting sensible predictions. What function
a given protein "serves", _might_ be somewhat
arbitrary, but thermodynamics rules (as always)
and that will set limits on what structures can be
"meaningful" in that "some context". In short,
I suspect the free energy landscape is a bit more
restricted than some people have been claiming.
by Grace we proceed,
Wayne
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