Interesting Links for 26-08-2019

[andrewducker]

What The Code of Hammurabi Can Teach Us About Hardware and Software Liability

(tags:responsibility history software viaFanf )

Do American Writers Think Irish is Public Domain Elvish?

(tags:Ireland writing fantasy language viaNWhyte )

Some lovely photos from The People's Vote Rally, Edinburgh

(tags:uk europe photos )

The Wug Test (I had no idea we made three noises for the plural s)

(tags:language English children viaSwampers )

A flawed idea is teaching millions of American kids to be poor readers.

(tags:reading USA viaFanf )

Moscow's blockchain voting system cracked a month before election

(tags:russia blockchain voting )

Association of Restless Legs Syndrome With Risk of Suicide and Self-harm

(tags:self-harm suicide )

Sun boycott reduced Euroscepticism on Merseyside

(tags:media UK Europe )

Comments

[andrewducker]

How does "adding an s on the end" prove we're not doing it by rote?

[cosmolinguist]

Given a made-up word, so one that the kid can't have heard before and learned from copying others, the kid can accurately use the correct form (like the /z/ with "wug"). Hardly anyone can explain that this is because the voiced final consonant requires the voiced alteration of the underlying plural, but everyone is applying that rule when they make the plural of a word they haven't heard before.

[andrewducker]

"When you see X do Y" sounds like almost the definition of "rote" to me.

[cosmolinguist]

Hm, okay, I was using "by rote" to mean memorization by repetition of examples. It teaches you the examples, not the underlying rule.