Michael cites a Youtube clip that is indeed clever. A while back I think I mentioned "zero copula". A zero copula language is one without 'is', 'am' or 'are'. In other words, no present tense Does that sound primitive or illiterate? Then Chinese, Russian, Indonesian, Arabic, Irish, Hebrew, Turkish, Amerindian, and American Sign Language are illiterate.
Michael is right to suspect the translatability of much time-involved language. Some say this makes translation into English always intrinsically imperfect. (But Queen Victoria was said to be gratified to learn that those languages, savage though they were, eschewed those linguistic atrocities -- copulative verbs.) A challenge for Michael, comparable to my questioning the clarity of his notion of 'rules': I'll bet the notion you have when you say or hear 'expression' varies a good deal. So why, if you don't describe your notion with a given usage, would you ever expect any reader to know what's on your mind? Michael wrote: > Here's an interesting exercise: > > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Weq_sHxghcg > > It's a great demonstration of how critically important word order is in > English ... and by implication, how much structural preparation must > precede > looking and hearing. > > I recently read an article on-line about computers, translations, and > natural > language. Unfortunately, I've lost the link. But one thing that struck me > in > the article was a remark the author made about how our concept of time is > constructed by and deeply embedded in the way we express time in language, > i.e., by what we call "tense" in English. English uses six principal > tenses > (two each of past, present, and future) plus several other manifestations > of > time (e.g., the use of the infinitive in the subjunctive). Other languages > use > different methods to express time (I don't even know how they are > coordinated > or correlated when making translations). > > > | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | > Michael Brady
