The Evolution

The Evolution
42
this arrangement, especially among those languages that have little or
no inflection, and which therefore are especially dependent on word
order to convey meaning. Thus it is important that the word order used
in Chinese, the world's most important uninflected language, is as predicted
Also note that languages which, like English, employ the optimal word
order should form compound words more freely and confidently than languages,
such as French, which do not. This is because the non-optimal word order,
which is normally a nuisance to memory, becomes a double nuisance when
incorporated in a compound word, especially when it is written. Thus
while pomme de terre (roughly "apple of the earth" or potato) is merely
a psychological inconvenience, pommeterre (appleearth) the equivalent
compound word, is a real psychological calamity for a memory attempting
a Type II intersection of its component parts to obtain "potato." Memory
first has to recognize that it is a compound, then locate where the second
word begins, read it, then read the first word, and then carry out the
intersection. Or memory can read the first word, recognize that it is
a compound, and then try to keep its part-whole links activated while
the second word is read and its whole-to-whole links are established, a
process that inevitably involves activation interference. With the correct
order, of course, a compound may simply read straight off without any
special treatment (according, earthapple is an entirely convenient
term for "potato"; whereas appleearth is not).

Admittedly some languages appear to form compounds quite comfortably
in the reverse order, for instance the American Indian language Yana

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