> First he complains about the fact that we use an alphabet.
No, he doesn't. What he says is: "it has probably the worst alphabetical writing system in the world", and "What an alphabet does is spell out the sounds of words at the level of consonants and vowels. And I don’t think you can find a language that does it worse or more perversely than English does."
I think you've misunderstood the structure of the paragraph in which he says those things. He mentions Chinese and Cambodian not to say "these would be better" but to say "you might want to respond to my complaint about English orthography by saying these languages are worse, but that would miss the point because they're the way they are because they're non-alphabetic, and what I'm claiming is that among alphabetic systems English has a particularly bad one".
> The large vocabulary [...] is what makes English so attractive for scientific application.
What Pullum says is: "You may think of this as a rich lexical treasure-house that we should prize; some might call it a needless and memory-burdening overstock of alternatives, reminiscent of the cereal aisle of a modern supermarket. The English lexicon could have been far less profligate, given a little forethought." In other words: yeah, it's good to have a wide variety of ideas represented in your vocabulary, but the English lexicon is redundant and could have been markedly smaller without substantial loss of expressivity and flexibility.
(I am not sure whether I agree with him, but I'm pretty sure I disagree with you if you're suggesting that science benefits particularly from the rich vocabulary of English. Technical terms can be, and are, imported into any language; that's not where English is unusual; and science doesn't make particular use of e.g. the ability to distinguish between {cow,beef,veal} or {sheep,lamb,mutton} or {sleepy,tired,fatigued,knackered,exhausted,weary,...}.)
No, he doesn't. What he says is: "it has probably the worst alphabetical writing system in the world", and "What an alphabet does is spell out the sounds of words at the level of consonants and vowels. And I don’t think you can find a language that does it worse or more perversely than English does."
I think you've misunderstood the structure of the paragraph in which he says those things. He mentions Chinese and Cambodian not to say "these would be better" but to say "you might want to respond to my complaint about English orthography by saying these languages are worse, but that would miss the point because they're the way they are because they're non-alphabetic, and what I'm claiming is that among alphabetic systems English has a particularly bad one".
> The large vocabulary [...] is what makes English so attractive for scientific application.
What Pullum says is: "You may think of this as a rich lexical treasure-house that we should prize; some might call it a needless and memory-burdening overstock of alternatives, reminiscent of the cereal aisle of a modern supermarket. The English lexicon could have been far less profligate, given a little forethought." In other words: yeah, it's good to have a wide variety of ideas represented in your vocabulary, but the English lexicon is redundant and could have been markedly smaller without substantial loss of expressivity and flexibility.
(I am not sure whether I agree with him, but I'm pretty sure I disagree with you if you're suggesting that science benefits particularly from the rich vocabulary of English. Technical terms can be, and are, imported into any language; that's not where English is unusual; and science doesn't make particular use of e.g. the ability to distinguish between {cow,beef,veal} or {sheep,lamb,mutton} or {sleepy,tired,fatigued,knackered,exhausted,weary,...}.)