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Linguists try to keep the system simple and elegant.
The simplest or most elegant system is the one preferred. B. Bloch and
his insistence on long vowel in pa'd vs. pod. Not simple: would have
made length PHONEMIC, and that would have ended us up with a skewed,
imbalanced, asymmetrical system in the distribution of long/short
vowels. ESCHEW OBFUSCATION.
Harold Schiffman
Fri Jan 17 09:48:04 EST 1997