From: Curtis Clark (jcclark@mockfont.com)
Date: Tue Dec 16 2003 - 12:41:07 EST
on 2003-12-16 02:53 Peter Kirk wrote:
> Even if this is a millennial reign of peace
> and prosperity, processes of language change will not stop.
A measure of comparison is the system of biological nomenclature, which
has maintained stability of names in the face of increasing knowledge of
organisms over a period of a quarter of a millenium. There are no ISO
standards for scientific names--the system has succeeded through
consensus, by biologists agreeing that a stable system is worth the
trade of quite a bit of individualism (not to mention the periodic and
sometimes raucous conventions when the rules are modified).
-- Curtis Clark http://www.csupomona.edu/~jcclark/ Mockingbird Font Works http://www.mockfont.com/
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