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There are 25 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1. Re: Proto-Languages Question
From: Elliott Lash <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
2. Re: 1st, 2nd, 3rd - 4th person POV??
From: Keith Gaughan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
3. Re: 1st, 2nd, 3rd - 4th person POV??
From: Joe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
4. Caveman Language
From: "B. Garcia" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
5. Re: 1st, 2nd, 3rd - 4th person POV??
From: Tim May <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
6. Re: 1st, 2nd, 3rd - 4th person POV??
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
7. Re: 1st, 2nd, 3rd - 4th person POV??
From: "H. S. Teoh" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
8. Re: Conlangs of mischief (Was: Re: I'm back!)
From: "H. S. Teoh" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
9. Re: Number/Specificality/Archetypes in Language
From: Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
10. Re: OOPs!! When is a class not a class? (Re: Number/Specificality/Archetypes
in Language)
From: Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
11. Re: Word order (Was: Conlangs of mischief (Which in turn was: Re: I'm back!)
From: Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
12. Re: Caveman Language
From: taliesin the storyteller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
13. Re: 1st, 2nd, 3rd - 4th person POV??
From: John Cowan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
14. Re: OOPs!! When is a class not a class? (Re: Number/Specificality/Archetypes
in Language)
From: Keith Gaughan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
15. Re: 2 Re Word order (Was: Conlangs of mischief
From: Rodlox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
16. Contemporaneous protolanguages
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
17. Re: 1st, 2nd, 3rd - 4th person POV??
From: David Peterson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
18. Re: Word order (Was: Conlangs of mischief (Which in turn was: Re: I'm back!)
From: Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
19. Re: Conlangs of mischief (Was: Re: I'm back!)
From: "H. S. Teoh" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
20. Re: Word order (Was: Conlangs of mischief (Which in turn was: Re: I'm back!)
From: David Peterson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
21. Re: 1st, 2nd, 3rd - 4th person POV??
From: Carol Anne Buckley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
22. Re: 2 Re Word order (Was: Conlangs of mischief
From: David Peterson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
23. Re: Basque Gender Marking (was Re: Further language development Q's)
From: Paul Bennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
24. Re: 1st, 2nd, 3rd - 4th person POV??
From: David Peterson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
25. Re: Contemporaneous protolanguages
From: Paul Bennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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Message: 1
Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 05:21:07 -0700
From: Elliott Lash <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Proto-Languages Question
--- David Peterson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Elliott wrote:
>
> <snip everything>
>
> <<Anyways, what do you all think?>>
>
> This looks far too advanced for me to complicate on
> specifics.
> However, I'll offer this general advice, for what
> it's worth: The
> good thing about proto-languages for conlangs is
> that you can
> always create more! So if Nindic and Silic aren't
> close enough
> together, why not create another level for one or
> both of them?
> Or many more levels?
Well, the thing is, they are basically close in all
but vocabulary.
The major grammatical difference between the two is
the lack of cases outside of pronouns in Nindic, as
opposed to a widespread casification of enclitic
particles in Silic. In addition Silic preserves most
of original cases, like accusative (-n), genitive
(-di).
In terms of vocabulary, many of the items in Nindic
are possible in Silic, with differing meanings or
connotations, hence I'm aware of the similarities, I'm
just not sure how to relate the matters of vocabulary
change in a systematic way.
As for adding another level, I'm afraid that's
somewhat too simplistic and basically impossible at
this point: the back story being too set down in
stone.
Elliott
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Message: 2
Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 13:34:04 +0100
From: Keith Gaughan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: 1st, 2nd, 3rd - 4th person POV??
Rodlox wrote:
> this was #7...
>
>
>> growing up, I learned how to write...I learned about 1st Person POV (I,
>>singular, only writing the thoughts of the narrator) & 3rd Person POV
>>(writing the thoughts of everyone in the story) & 2nd Person POV (I've
>
> been
>
>>a bit hazy about how often this delves into the thoughts of others).
>>
>> BUT, more to the point of this thread, I've lately been hearing about
>>another -- a "4th Person POV".
>>
>> anybody have any ideas or theories about what it might be?
It occurs in several north american languages. It's kind of like dexis
(this, that, yon) applied to third person pronouns. The third person
in these languages like kind of like "this person", whereas the fourth
person is like "that person", making them a more distant referrent.
K.
--
Keith Gaughan -- talideon.com
The man who removes a mountain begins
by carrying away small stones...
...to make place for some really big nukes!
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Message: 3
Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 13:46:52 +0100
From: Joe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: 1st, 2nd, 3rd - 4th person POV??
Keith Gaughan wrote:
> Rodlox wrote:
>
>> this was #7...
>>
>>
>>> growing up, I learned how to write...I learned about 1st Person POV (I,
>>> singular, only writing the thoughts of the narrator) & 3rd Person POV
>>> (writing the thoughts of everyone in the story) & 2nd Person POV (I've
>>
>>
>> been
>>
>>> a bit hazy about how often this delves into the thoughts of others).
>>>
>>> BUT, more to the point of this thread, I've lately been hearing about
>>> another -- a "4th Person POV".
>>>
>>> anybody have any ideas or theories about what it might be?
>>
>
> It occurs in several north american languages. It's kind of like dexis
> (this, that, yon) applied to third person pronouns. The third person
> in these languages like kind of like "this person", whereas the fourth
> person is like "that person", making them a more distant referrent.
In stories, of course, the 3rd person(Proximate) is the main character,
and the 4th person(Obligate, I think) is a secondary character.
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Message: 4
Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 06:36:14 -0700
From: "B. Garcia" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Caveman Language
I have a friend who is interested when I discuss conlangs, and he
recently asked if i'd like to create a caveman language for a book
he's writing. I told him i'm too indecisive to even nail down
Saalangal, let alone start another project for someone else. But i
said i'd throw this out there to see if anyone else might be
interested. Before i list a contact address i'm seeing if *anyone* is
interested first.
So, any takers?
Please email me privately: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Barry
--
Listen Johnny;
You're like a mother to the girl you've fallen for,
And you're still falling,
And if they come tonight
You'll roll up tight and take whatever's coming to you next.
Slow Graffitti - Belle and Sebastian
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Message: 5
Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 16:23:35 +0100
From: Tim May <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: 1st, 2nd, 3rd - 4th person POV??
Joe wrote at 2004-09-24 13:46:52 (+0100)
> Keith Gaughan wrote:
>
> >
> > It occurs in several north american languages. It's kind of like dexis
> > (this, that, yon) applied to third person pronouns. The third person
> > in these languages like kind of like "this person", whereas the fourth
> > person is like "that person", making them a more distant referrent.
>
>
> In stories, of course, the 3rd person(Proximate) is the main character,
> and the 4th person(Obligate, I think) is a secondary character.
Obviative. Incidentally, it's preferable to use these terms
(proximate and obviative), if that's what you're talking about, since
the term "4th person" has been applied to a variety of different
linguistic phenomena over the years. (I don't think any of them
(e.g. long-range reflexives in Inuktitut) are particularly suitable
for the POV of a story.)
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Message: 6
Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 12:24:41 -0400
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: 1st, 2nd, 3rd - 4th person POV??
Rodlox wrote:
> growing up, I learned how to write...I learned about 1st Person POV (I,
> singular, only writing the thoughts of the narrator) & 3rd Person POV
> (writing the thoughts of everyone in the story) & 2nd Person POV (I've
> been a bit hazy about how often this delves into the thoughts of others).
>
> BUT, more to the point of this thread, I've lately been hearing about
> another -- a "4th Person POV".
>
> anybody have any ideas or theories about what it might be?
>
I don't think the question has to do with "4th Person" as linguists use it
(but I could be wrong....)
When you say "learned to write" I take that to refer to the writing of
fiction. If that's the case, then your statement of "3rd Pers. POV" is
phrased incorrectly--- in 3rd Pers.POV, you're restricted to the
thoughts/actions/views of a _single_ character. Sometimes one
chapter/section will be from one character's POV, another chapter/section
from another's and so on, thus A's clueless behavior in Ch. 1 is explained
by B's comments on it in Ch. 2, while C's comments in Ch. 3 may show that B
was totally off-base etc. etc.; but each chapter is written from a single
POV.
There is another method-- and authors using 3d POV sometimes sidetrack into
it :-) -- namely, the Omniscient Narrator, which/who _does_ know the
"thoughts of everyone in the story". This may be what you mean by 4th Pers.
POV.
(I stopped trying to write fiction long ago, but as I recall, Omniscient
Narrator is easy, but sort of a cop-out; good writers are supposed to
develop characters and illuminate their actions/motivations without
resorting to Playing God. Though I hasten to add that O.N. can be a useful
and legit method sometimes.)
In the various creative writing classes I took waaaaay back when (with a
deliciously bitchy teacher) we had to do exercises in all these methods; 2d
Pers. is the hardest, rather weird, and uncommon in Engl. prose probably for
good reason.
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Message: 7
Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 09:57:22 -0700
From: "H. S. Teoh" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: 1st, 2nd, 3rd - 4th person POV??
On Fri, Sep 24, 2004 at 12:24:41PM -0400, Roger Mills wrote:
[...]
> In the various creative writing classes I took waaaaay back when (with a
> deliciously bitchy teacher) we had to do exercises in all these methods; 2d
> Pers. is the hardest, rather weird, and uncommon in Engl. prose probably for
> good reason.
Back in my highschool days, I had an English teacher who was convinced
it was impossible to write a story in the 2nd person. I proved her
wrong by writing precisely such a thing, and she absolutely loved it
(she says she likes its melodramatic tone). Unfortunately, I've lost
my only copy of it, and I don't think I'd be able to reproduce it
anytime soon.
Anyway, it's something crudely along these lines: the opening
paragraph begins with a hypothetical (thus making it easier to use the
2nd person from the start), and then proceeds to develop what happens
in the hypothetical scenario. In this case, it's describing how you
walk up to the bank machine and stand in line, with the person in
front of you taking his sweeeeet time and the person behind you
getting really impatient. Eventually, this person in front of you
finally gets his stuff together and leaves, and so you walk up to the
machine and start looking for your bank card, which unfortunately you
have misplaced. So on you search, flipping through your wallet,
scavenging through your trouser pockets, and dropping your comb, loose
change, and bits of paper on the floor, etc., until you made a
thorough fool of yourself while the person behind you frowns and
grumbles at you like an angry impatient bear.
(Notice how the use of the 2nd person doesn't actually hit you until
you look twice. :-P) The closing paragraph then summarizes the moral
of the story, basically taking a poke at today's age of plastic money
and endless cards that fill up your wallet to bursting point. The
original story, of course, was more elaborate than this, but you get
the idea.
T
--
If you want to solve a problem, you need to address its root cause, not just
its symptoms. Otherwise it's like treating cancer with Tylenol...
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Message: 8
Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 10:04:52 -0700
From: "H. S. Teoh" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Conlangs of mischief (Was: Re: I'm back!)
On Thu, Sep 23, 2004 at 08:09:45PM -0400, David Peterson wrote:
> Teoh wrote:
>
> <<Keep 'em comin'! ;-)>>
>
> How about this: Metes appears to have no grammar or parts
> of speech of any kind whatsoever. I was the one who had to
> try to decipher the text. It also appears that all utterances are
> just one long word (if I understood the hyphens right). Take
> a look at the Metes text, and how I translated it:
>
> Metes:
> http://steen.free.fr/relay10/metes.html
Very interesting. Metes seems to be incompletely described on the
linked webpage, that does add a lot of obscurity to it. Nevertheless,
its lax semantics makes it a worthy challenger to Ebisédian! :-) I
like its impersonal, intemporal register. It's semantically very
reminiscient of a conlang (or rather, freaklang) that I thought of
making, but never got around to, which is set in a different universe
from Ferochromon, but interacted with it on various occasions.
Nevertheless, I'd like to see more explanation for how compound words
are formed, for example. I think part of the reason it looks so odd is
because there's little or no description of how this process actually
works. (If a more detailed explanation has already been posted, I'm
sorry, I've just come back to CONLANG, so please point me to it.)
T
--
Notwithstanding the eloquent discontent that you have just respectfully
expressed at length against my verbal capabilities, I am afraid that I must
unfortunately bring it to your attention that I am, in fact, NOT verbose.
________________________________________________________________________
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Message: 9
Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 18:36:16 +0100
From: Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Number/Specificality/Archetypes in Language
On Thursday, September 23, 2004, at 10:51 , Philippe Caquant wrote:
> --- Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> a écrit :
[snip]
>> such classes. In Plato's thinking the Forms are not
>> abstract; they not
>> only have a transcendent existence, they are more
>> real than anything we
>> see in the physical material world.
>
> Hmmm... "more real" doesn't mean much to me. To me,
> that's all a question of mental representation,
> limited by the possibilities of the human brain. Of
> course, in Plato's time, people probably considered
> things differently.
To be quite frank, _ordinary people_ consider things differently even now!
Most people, for example, would say that a horse is real and a unicorn is
not. Even the ancients knew that the limitations, not merely of the brain
but also of sense organs like ears & eyes, limit or even distort our
perception of things. That is why some like Plato considered only human
reasoning could hope to discover the truth.
But IME most people have some idea that certain things have a greater
reality than others.
[snip]
> Plato's conception should probably be adapted to our
> time,
I think you've omitted a negative.
> but something from it might be re-used,
> reorienting it in a different perspective.
Plato's conceptions might be more apt. It will be found that no single
coherent system can be constructed from his writings. They leave
tantalizing ambiguities and lacunae. The thing is that he considered the
highest truths to be beyond the norms of human language and could be
explained only by parable, metaphor etc. He thought their abstruseness
would just seem ridiculous to anyone except initiates, therefore the
highest truths - his esoteric teaching - must not be put into writing. So
we are left with his exoteric writings.
It is true that Neoplatonists of later ages did elaborate complete systems,
but we have no guarantee that any where Plato's. But, I agree, looking at
thinks the way Plato presents them
[snip]
>> Yes, but do not think Plato would see it that way at
>> all. Objects inherit
>> methods & attributes of the class of which they are
>> instantiations. But
>> humans, elephants, tables, computers, trees, etc.,
>> etc. are not for Plato
>> instantiations. But. i admit, it is not entirely
>> clear how he saw
>> _metekein_ working.
>>
> If it means "participate", then one perhaps could
> compare it to a human being participating to different
> clubs or associations, being a subscriber or a
> customer for different products, etc. You can be a
> conlanger, a vegetarian, a baseball player, a faithful
> reader of "Playboy" and an Electricite de France
> customer. None of these aspects defines you, you don't
> "belong" to any of these entities, and you can share
> in many of them at the same time.
I think that is fair comment and that Plato would probably have agreed.
Ray
===============================================
http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
===============================================
"They are evidently confusing science with technology."
UMBERTO ECO September, 2004
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Message: 10
Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 18:36:09 +0100
From: Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: OOPs!! When is a class not a class? (Re: Number/Specificality/Archetypes
in Language)
On Thursday, September 23, 2004, at 09:57 , Keith Gaughan wrote:
> Ray Brown wrote:
>> set of objects sharing similar properties & methods. But - {blushes
>> deeply}
>> - if I had stopped to think about it, Javascript could not have formal
>> classes because it is such a weakly typed language. (Darned scripting
>> languages :)
>>
>> OK - Philippe, if your only experience of using objects is JavaScript,
>> maybe we had better not continue using the class ~ object analogy
>> otherwise we are very likely to be talking at cross-purposes, which won'
>> t
>> help anybody.
>
> Oh, for the time!
Amen!! I'm busier now I'm retired than I have been for many a year.
> JavaScript uses prototype-based OO, unlike the
> class-based OO of most languages. The thing about POP is that it's
> far more powerful and flexible than classed-based OO.
My "darned scripting languages" was not meant to be serious.
I certainly wasn't intending to imply that strict typing & formal classes
were better (or worse) per_se than any other type of approach. My main
purpose was simply to point out that I had not done my homework, so to
speak, and when I woke up to the fact that 'class' in Java & C++ has a
different meaning from the informal use of class that Philippe has
probably come across with Javascript, I thought it best to point out that
we are probably talking at cross purposes here.
I can well believe POP is more flexible and powerful. I still remember how,
many years ago, I was really excited when I discovered Prolog - and that
language is about as untyped as it's possible to get. One of the things I
really liked about Prolog was its flexibility & power. Indeed, of all the
languages I've used, Prolog still remains the one I most enjoyed using.
> I don't have a lot of time to go into it. But I'll say that it's a
> really bad idea to try and program JavaScript like a class-based
> language.
That I will not dispute for one moment. IME it is always a bad idea to try
and program a language designed one basis in terms another with a
different basis, sort of like programming (logic-based) Prolog as tho it
was (procedural) Pascal - which I have seen, ach!!! It usually does mean..
...
> While you can, you end up missing out on a lot of the power
> it has hidden within.
Exactly.
> Off the top of my head, I'd so say read the
> following:
URLs snipped - but thanks, I'll try to make time to read some :)
Ray
===============================================
http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
===============================================
"They are evidently confusing science with technology."
UMBERTO ECO September, 2004
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Message: 11
Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 18:36:20 +0100
From: Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Word order (Was: Conlangs of mischief (Which in turn was: Re: I'm back!)
On Thursday, September 23, 2004, at 09:19 , Robert Hill wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> On Friday 24 September 2004 00:09, David Peterson wrote:
>
>> But, yes, having no word order is no problem.
It is a problem - it's an impossibility if we are producing sounds
serially or writing in any way that is recognized as writing. The sounds
(and characters) come one after another, i.e. there is an order.
I remember being told half a century ago that Latin has no word order,
because it relies on endings to show relations between words. It was not
long before I realized that is nonsense. What Latin has is fairly _free_
word order - but there certainly are criteria at work determining the
order in which words are actually placed.
>> My first conlang
>> had no word order, and there's *allegedly* a language in a Australia
>> that doesn't even have a preferential word order.
"Doesn't even have a preferential word order" seems to me that you expect
a language to have preferential orderings even if it allows a high degree
of freedom in the ordering of words. I would agree with that.
>> What matters is
>> whether or not all the arguments are marked.
Indeed - if all arguments are unambiguously marked, then free word order
is possible. But even then we would not, I think, allow all the words in a
multi-clausal to disregard clause boundaries, would we?
Also when a person speaks or writes s/he will have to put the words in
some order or other. Do we really believe that a person is going to have
all the words in his/her head and then apply a randomizing function to
determine how they will fall out? There must surely be some criteria
governing the order even if these criteria are largely or wholly
extra-linguistic.
> I am curious as to how many people actually have conlangs with no word
> order.
Indeed - how do they determine the order in which they actually write
their words & morphemes? Do they really just use a randomizing function?
How would they imagine the language actually being used.
> I tooled around with it for a while and eventually it got too stupid for
> me
> to follow ;).
:-)
===========================================
On Friday, September 24, 2004, at 01:09 , David Peterson wrote:
> Teoh wrote:
>
> <<Keep 'em comin'! ;-)>>
>
> How about this: Metes appears to have no grammar or parts
> of speech of any kind whatsoever. I was the one who had to
> try to decipher the text. It also appears that all utterances are
> just one long word (if I understood the hyphens right). Take
> a look at the Metes text, and how I translated it:
>
> Metes:
> http://steen.free.fr/relay10/metes.html
I have looked - the letters come serially. There is order.
Even if Metes makes single utterances one word, the words are ordered,
unless everyone is speaking at the same time. The single-utterance words
are obviously composed of morphemes - they are surely ordered, or did
Rolox simply get all his morphemes and then apply a randomizing function
before writing them down.
I can understand that a language does not have a fixed word order (not
uncommon) because arguments are highly marked. But but _no_ word order has
no meaning as far as I can see. Words have to be in some sort of order to
be uttered or written. How far that word order is determined by
consideration of syntax and how far by extra-linguistic considerations is
a different matter.
Ray
===============================================
http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
===============================================
"They are evidently confusing science with technology."
UMBERTO ECO September, 2004
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Message: 12
Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 19:23:30 +0200
From: taliesin the storyteller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Caveman Language
* B. Garcia said on 2004-09-24 15:36:14 +0200
> I have a friend who is interested when I discuss conlangs, and he
> recently asked if i'd like to create a caveman language for a book
> he's writing. I told him i'm too indecisive to even nail down
> Saalangal, let alone start another project for someone else. But i
> said i'd throw this out there to see if anyone else might be
> interested. Before i list a contact address i'm seeing if *anyone* is
> interested first.
I'd say we could make such a language together. An australian feel, say,
a u i for vowels, long words, few fricatives...
t.
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Message: 13
Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 13:53:22 -0400
From: John Cowan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: 1st, 2nd, 3rd - 4th person POV??
Roger Mills scripsit:
> (I stopped trying to write fiction long ago, but as I recall, Omniscient
> Narrator is easy, but sort of a cop-out; good writers are supposed to
> develop characters and illuminate their actions/motivations without
> resorting to Playing God. Though I hasten to add that O.N. can be a useful
> and legit method sometimes.)
Ursula Le Guin's excellent book on narrative writing (both
fiction and non-fiction, e.g. memoir) discusses all the narrative
voices even-handedly, discussing what works and what doesn't about
omniscient, single-viewpoint, multiple-viewpoint, first-person, and
second-person narration. It's called _Steering the Craft_; details at
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0933377460 . She also discusses
the impact of past-tense vs. present-tense narration.
I recommend this book even if you don't want to write narrative prose.
--
A few times, I did some exuberant stomping about, John Cowan
like a hippo auditioning for Riverdance, though [EMAIL PROTECTED]
I stopped when I thought I heard something at www.ccil.org/~cowan
the far side of the room falling over in rhythm www.reutershealth.com
with my feet. -- Joseph Zitt
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Message: 14
Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 19:02:50 +0100
From: Keith Gaughan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: OOPs!! When is a class not a class? (Re: Number/Specificality/Archetypes
in Language)
Ray Brown wrote:
> On Thursday, September 23, 2004, at 09:57 , Keith Gaughan wrote:
>
>> Oh, for the time!
>
> Amen!! I'm busier now I'm retired than I have been for many a year.
>
>> JavaScript uses prototype-based OO, unlike the
>> class-based OO of most languages. The thing about POP is that it's
>> far more powerful and flexible than classed-based OO.
>
> My "darned scripting languages" was not meant to be serious.
Nah, I wasn't taking it seriously. That was just me being rather
enthusiastic about POP and scripting.
> I can well believe POP is more flexible and powerful. I still remember how,
> many years ago, I was really excited when I discovered Prolog - and that
> language is about as untyped as it's possible to get. One of the things I
> really liked about Prolog was its flexibility & power. Indeed, of all the
> languages I've used, Prolog still remains the one I most enjoyed using.
Ditto. First version I came across was Humboldt University Prolog on the
Acorn Archimedes. Spent many hours messing with it. It really opened up
a lot of new way of thinking about programming to me.
Prolog's a bit underappreciated, I think.
>> I don't have a lot of time to go into it. But I'll say that it's a
>> really bad idea to try and program JavaScript like a class-based
>> language.
>
> That I will not dispute for one moment. IME it is always a bad idea to try
> and program a language designed one basis in terms another with a
> different basis, sort of like programming (logic-based) Prolog as tho it
> was (procedural) Pascal - which I have seen, ach!!! It usually does mean..
Yup. I took AI in my last year in college (mainly just to have an excuse
to exercise my Prolog Kung-Fu), and few of my classmates seemed to get
the idea of writing code declaratively rather than purely procedurally.
Sure, you need to have the procedural implications of what you're
writing in mind when you're developing in Prolog, but their brains were
so addled by Java that they just didn't get that.
K.
--
Keith Gaughan -- talideon.com
The man who removes a mountain begins
by carrying away small stones...
...to make place for some really big nukes!
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Message: 15
Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 21:40:11 +0200
From: Rodlox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: 2 Re Word order (Was: Conlangs of mischief
this is two replies to two distinct posts...I fear this may be my 5th post
of the day...hence my combining them. please, do not be offended.
On Thu, Sep 23, 2004 at 08:09:45PM -0400, David Peterson wrote:
> Teoh wrote:
>
> <<Keep 'em comin'! ;-)>>
>
> How about this: Metes appears to have no grammar or parts
> of speech of any kind whatsoever. I was the one who had to
> try to decipher the text. It also appears that all utterances are
> just one long word (if I understood the hyphens right). Take
> a look at the Metes text, and how I translated it:
>
>> Metes:
>> http://steen.free.fr/relay10/metes.html
>Very interesting. Metes seems to be incompletely described on the
linked webpage,
oh, it gets better -- the linked webpage was something I forgot to update
after I did a (minor?) overhaul of the language, just prior to the Relay.
> that does add a lot of obscurity to it. Nevertheless,
its lax semantics makes it a worthy challenger to Ebisédian!
drat!
(um, you *do* realize that I'd been *joking* when I mentioned Metes as a
challenger). yes?
> :-) I
like its impersonal, intemporal register.
thank you.
(statement-of-which-I-am-fairly/reasonably-sure/certain). :)
>Nevertheless, I'd like to see more explanation for how compound words
are formed, for example. I think part of the reason it looks so odd is
because there's little or no description of how this process actually
works
at- = To go; a year
au- = To perceive
attau = to perceive {understand} a year {calendrical signifigance}
(initially, I was puzzled...most of Proto-Indo-European seemed to be
prefixes (what with alll the - at- the- end- of- words- ).
>T
>--
>Notwithstanding the eloquent discontent that you have just respectfully
expressed at length against my verbal capabilities, I am afraid that I must
unfortunately bring it to your attention that I am, in fact, NOT verbose.
pf.
:)
> ===========================================
> On Friday, September 24, 2004, at 01:09 , David Peterson wrote:
>
> > Teoh wrote:
> >
> > <<Keep 'em comin'! ;-)>>
> >
> > How about this: Metes appears to have no grammar or parts
> > of speech of any kind whatsoever. I was the one who had to
> > try to decipher the text. It also appears that all utterances are
> > just one long word (if I understood the hyphens right).
you did...I wanted to show that it was a super-aggutinating language (1
sentance = 1 word), yet allow ease for the Relay people to distinguish the
portions from one another.
hmm...on that thought...maybe I should have used more of a
sequential-grammar-order...
ie, male-person--oven-cooks--barley-drink.
(fermenting/syrup-izing beer again, Methos?).
and yes, that's where I got the name - from HIGHLANDER.
>> Take
> > a look at the Metes text, and how I translated it
> > Metes:
> > http://steen.free.fr/relay10/metes.html
> I have looked - the letters come serially. There is order.
>
> Even if Metes makes single utterances one word, the words are ordered,
> unless everyone is speaking at the same time.
that's a whole other conlang, and one more suited to a herd species. :)
> The single-utterance words
> are obviously composed of morphemes - they are surely ordered, or did
> Rolox simply get all his morphemes and then apply a randomizing function
> before writing them down.
I used Proto-Indo-European as a guide (read, I tried to apply sound changes
to Proto-Indo-European words), and the result was Metes.
my *big* problem, imho, was that, when I crafted Metes, I accidentally
confused grammar with word order...since, up to that point, everyone I
talked to (admittedly, not in school & off the internet), had seemed to use
them interchangeably.
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Message: 16
Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 14:20:27 -0400
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Contemporaneous protolanguages
Suppose you could go back in time to when Proto-Indo-European
was spoken in the Caucasus or wherever we think it was these days.
Would a quick trip down to the Middle East find a culture of people
speaking Proto-Afroasiatic at the same time? And what would the
people in Eastern Asia be speaking at this point?
Presumably there wouldn't be anyone at all in the Americas yet . . .
-Marcos
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Message: 17
Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 14:18:23 EDT
From: David Peterson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: 1st, 2nd, 3rd - 4th person POV??
[You know, if I don't know someone's name, then I can't find it out, because
I
use AOL. All other mail services give you the person's name after the
address,
but not AOL.]
J. Mach Wust wrote:
<<Something similar but far more complex can be observed in sign languages. I
don't know up to how many 'parties' they could reference simultaneously, but
it's much more than in spoken language.>>
The number of parties that can be referenced is limited by physical,
not theoretical concerns. In other words, ASL is built to be able to
list an infinite number of parties, just as in English (or any language),
the longest sentence is infinitely long (e.g., "My friend's cousin's pet's
master's sister's uncle's grandpa's wife's daughter's cousin's..."). What
you do is you start out listing people from your left (if you're right-
handed), usually by name, and as you list more people you go to your
right in a semi-circle. Then, as you talk, when you use a third person
pronoun (a third person pronoun is achieved by pointing to anything
other than yourself or the person you're talking to), you point to the
area that you listed the person's name in. It'd be like if everyone was
born with their own pronoun. (Hey, there's an idea. Where's the
fantasy-writing people? I society where when a child is born, it's given
a name, and its very own pronoun, with which all most refer to it by.)
Incidentally, regarding the topic of POV in writing, Tom Robbins wrote
a book all in 2nd person. It's called Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas, and is
one of my favorites by him. Here's an Amazon link:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0553
377876/qid=1096049768/sr=8-1/ref=pd_csp_1/002-0607994-4263220?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
Ooh, maybe you shouldn't go there. Apparently nobody likes this book...
Geez, and everybody liked Villa Incognito?! You've got to be kidding me...
-David
*******************************************************************
"sunly eleSkarez ygralleryf ydZZixelje je ox2mejze."
"No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn."
-Jim Morrison
http://dedalvs.free.fr/
[This message contained attachments]
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Message: 18
Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 20:20:06 +0200
From: Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Word order (Was: Conlangs of mischief (Which in turn was: Re: I'm back!)
Quoting Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> Indeed - if all arguments are unambiguously marked, then free word order
> is possible. But even then we would not, I think, allow all the words in a
> multi-clausal to disregard clause boundaries, would we?
The size of the human brain being finite, I think we can assume without further
proof that there's a maximal distance a head can be removed from its dependent,
simply because the speakers brain won't be able to store sufficient intervening
text to allow parsing above some limit.
Andreas
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Message: 19
Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 11:12:23 -0700
From: "H. S. Teoh" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Conlangs of mischief (Was: Re: I'm back!)
On Fri, Sep 24, 2004 at 10:54:22AM +0200, Rodlox wrote:
[...]
> > ps: please note that I am not trying to steal the crown from you or
> > Ebisédian...I was just trying to make polite conversation...something I
> > clearly need further practice doing.
[...]
Don't worry, I don't regard it as "stealing the crown" or anything.
There's no "crown" to steal anyway. In fact, Ebisédian's notoriety is
rather a joke to me; it was never intended to be deliberately weird
even though it turned out that way. As for my response to your
message, I was just playing along with your challenge. No hostility
intended there. :-)
T
--
Heuristics are bug-ridden by definition. If they didn't have bugs, they'd be
algorithms.
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Message: 20
Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 14:28:02 EDT
From: David Peterson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Word order (Was: Conlangs of mischief (Which in turn was: Re: I'm back!)
Ray wrote:
<<It is a problem - it's an impossibility if we are producing sounds
serially or writing in any way that is recognized as writing. The sounds
(and characters) come one after another, i.e. there is an order.>>
Oh, oops. I of course meant "totally free word order". If words
*couldn't* be ordered, then, logically, they couldn't very well be
produced, could they? My bad. :)
<<"Doesn't even have a preferential word order" seems to me that you expect
a language to have preferential orderings even if it allows a high degree
of freedom in the ordering of words. I would agree with that.>>
And it's what most have agreed on, from what I've heard. Anyway, though,
now this has got me thinking: Is it the *word* order that's free in this
language,
or the *constituent* order? I mean, even in English, in certain cases, you
can
figure the sentence out with free word order:
"Him see I."
But I can't imagine a language where you could take, for example:
"The man on the roof gave a book with a blue cover to an unhappy girl in the
garden."
And produce:
"The a a an the on the in man roof to with blue gave garden book unhappy
cover girl."
Even if every element was so explicitly marked that there was no way of
confusing
which elements formed constituents and which didn't.
Though, I once did have an idea for a freak lang where if your
sentence was going to have three prepositions, four adjectives, five
nouns, a verb, and some particles, they all had to be fit into a preset
order, so that all the particles came first, then the prepositions, then
the adjectives, then the nouns, and then the verbs, and how they were
ordered told you which went with which.
-David
*******************************************************************
"sunly eleSkarez ygralleryf ydZZixelje je ox2mejze."
"No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn."
-Jim Morrison
http://dedalvs.free.fr/
[This message contained attachments]
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Message: 21
Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 14:19:05 -0400
From: Carol Anne Buckley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: 1st, 2nd, 3rd - 4th person POV??
Hi,
I'm new! I have been lurking for a few days. I have a BA in Linguistics
and Cognitive Psych and an MA in Linguistics (emphasis on Oceanic languages)
and am interested in language in general and Polynesian languages in
particular. I write futurist fiction (as yet unpublished). I have no
pressing need to develop a conlang at the moment, and, perhaps quixotically,
feel rather confident about doing it if I ever need to. (And it will
probably be based on Hawaiian, Maori and other EP languages.) I am more
interested in abstract discussions than the issues of constructing a
particular language.
However I met some of your extremely interesting list members at Worldcon
and thought it would be cool to see what y'all are writing about online.
I may have missed some of this discussion on person, but regarding
second-person stories: Pam Houston has had at least one excellent
second-person narrative short story published: "How to Talk to a Hunter."
The Best American Short Stories 1990. Boston: Houghton, 1990. 98-104.
Also, check out this article: Why you can't speak: second-person narration,
voice, and a new model for understanding narrative by Matt DelConte in the
Summer, 2003 issue of Style
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2342/is_2_37/ai_108267994/pg_1
He gives several examples.
Regarding third and fourth person, what does anyone think of that old
Beatles song, "This Boy," which compares "this boy" and "that boy," and how
each might treat the addressed female? I think it's first person and third
person grammatically masquerading as third person close and third person
remote.
It would be cool to have a language where the Dead are fourth person...or
gods or whoever on another plane.
Best,
Carol Anne Buckley
Warwick, RI
www.sff/net/people/buckley
----- Original Message -----
From: "H. S. Teoh" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Friday, September 24, 2004 12:57 PM
Subject: Re: 1st, 2nd, 3rd - 4th person POV??
> On Fri, Sep 24, 2004 at 12:24:41PM -0400, Roger Mills wrote:
> [...]
> > In the various creative writing classes I took waaaaay back when (with a
> > deliciously bitchy teacher) we had to do exercises in all these methods;
2d
> > Pers. is the hardest, rather weird, and uncommon in Engl. prose probably
for
> > good reason.
>
> Back in my highschool days, I had an English teacher who was convinced
> it was impossible to write a story in the 2nd person. I proved her
> wrong by writing precisely such a thing, and she absolutely loved it
> (she says she likes its melodramatic tone). Unfortunately, I've lost
> my only copy of it, and I don't think I'd be able to reproduce it
> anytime soon.
>
> Anyway, it's something crudely along these lines: the opening
> paragraph begins with a hypothetical (thus making it easier to use the
> 2nd person from the start), and then proceeds to develop what happens
> in the hypothetical scenario. In this case, it's describing how you
> walk up to the bank machine and stand in line, with the person in
> front of you taking his sweeeeet time and the person behind you
> getting really impatient. Eventually, this person in front of you
> finally gets his stuff together and leaves, and so you walk up to the
> machine and start looking for your bank card, which unfortunately you
> have misplaced. So on you search, flipping through your wallet,
> scavenging through your trouser pockets, and dropping your comb, loose
> change, and bits of paper on the floor, etc., until you made a
> thorough fool of yourself while the person behind you frowns and
> grumbles at you like an angry impatient bear.
>
> (Notice how the use of the 2nd person doesn't actually hit you until
> you look twice. :-P) The closing paragraph then summarizes the moral
> of the story, basically taking a poke at today's age of plastic money
> and endless cards that fill up your wallet to bursting point. The
> original story, of course, was more elaborate than this, but you get
> the idea.
>
>
> T
>
> --
> If you want to solve a problem, you need to address its root cause, not
just
> its symptoms. Otherwise it's like treating cancer with Tylenol...
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Message: 22
Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 14:39:37 EDT
From: David Peterson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: 2 Re Word order (Was: Conlangs of mischief
Rodlox wrote:
<<>Nevertheless, I'd like to see more explanation for how compound words
are formed, for example. I think part of the reason it looks so odd is
because there's little or no description of how this process actually
works
at- = To go; a year
au- = To perceive
attau = to perceive {understand} a year {calendrical signifigance}>>
This still doesn't make any sense to me, I'm afraid. First of all, if you
have
one word, and one definition is "to go", and the other definition is "a
year",
then what you have is two different words that have the same sound, like
"bank (of a river)" and "bank (that you keep your money in)". As such, they
should be listed separately.
Next, "to understand a year" doesn't mean anything. I just don't understand
what this concept is supposed to imply. Could you further elaborate on
what it means to understand a year, and why such a word would ever be
used by a human? Is it a verb meant to be used when you first understand
that a year is made up of months/seasons, or something? Is it when two
people are having a discussion, such as, "Hey, you remember in 1987 when
we were six?", "No, I don't.", "Don't you remember? Def Leppard's Hysteria
came out then, our teach was Mrs. Hudson..." "Oh! Attau!" (I.e., now
the
other interlocutor understands the year being discussed.)
This was part of the problem. The compound you list above appears to be
rather straightforward (verb + direct object = verb with understood direct
object), but the result doesn't make much sense. I had that problem a lot
with Metes.
And, of course, the 1 sentence = 1 word thing wasn't all that easy to wrap
one's head around, as well. ;)
-David
*******************************************************************
"sunly eleSkarez ygralleryf ydZZixelje je ox2mejze."
"No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn."
-Jim Morrison
http://dedalvs.free.fr/
[This message contained attachments]
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Message: 23
Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 14:42:27 -0400
From: Paul Bennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Basque Gender Marking (was Re: Further language development Q's)
On Fri, 24 Sep 2004 10:03:06 +0200, Tamas Racsko <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
> (Btw, in English literature, is there
> distinction
> between terms "polysynthetic" and "incorporating"?)
Sometimes. Trask:
polysynthetic /pQlIsIn'TetIk/ adj. A label sometimes applied to word
froms, or to languages employing such word forms, consisting of an
unusually large number of bound morphemes, some of them with meanings or
functions that would be expressed by separate words in most other
languages. In a polysynthetic language, very often a complete sentence
seems to consist of a single such word. Polysynthetic languages are
particularly frequent in North America; the Iroquoian languages are
well-known examples. Müller (1880); earlier linguists had used the term
incorporating, but this last term is now usually given a more specific
meaning.
incorporation /In,kO:p@'reISn=/ n. 1. The grammatical process in which a
single inflected word form contains two or more lexical roots. In the
Siberian language Chukchi, for example, the English sentence 'the friends
put a net' can be expressed either without incorporation as "tumG-e
kupre-n [EMAIL PROTECTED]" friend-ERG net-ABS:SG PRT-put-3:PL->3:SG or in the
incorporated form "[EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]" friend-ABS:PL net-put-3:PL,
in which the noun meaning 'net' has been incorporated into the verb.
Incorporation is not confined to object NPs; Chukchi also allows the
incorporation of various oblique NPs into the verb. 2. The realisation as
affixes of lexical morphemes the could alternatively be expressed as
separate words, there being no formal resemblance beteween the competing
bound and free realizations. An example is the Siberian Yupik Eskimo
sentence "aNja-Rl_0a-N-juG-tuq" boat-AUGM-acquire-want-3:SG 'he wants to
get a big boat'. This resembles the Chukchi case in that the morphemes
'acquire' and 'want' could instead be realised as separate words; it
differs in that the bound forms of 'acquire' and 'want' bear no formal
resemblance to the corresponding free forms, and hence the Eskimo sentence
is one word consisting of a single lexical root ("aNja-" 'boat') plus a
number of derivational and inflectional affixes. Note: Comrie (1981)
recommends that the term 'incorporation' be restricted only to the first
sense, but in practice it is widely used also for the second.
Paul
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Message: 24
Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 14:45:04 EDT
From: David Peterson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: 1st, 2nd, 3rd - 4th person POV??
Carol wrote:
<<I'm new! I have been lurking for a few days. I have a BA in Linguistics
and Cognitive Psych and an MA in Linguistics (emphasis on Oceanic languages)
and am interested in language in general and Polynesian languages in
particular. I write futurist fiction (as yet unpublished). >>
Welcome, Carol. In a year's time Ihope to be exactly in the same
place (only with "English" in place of "Cognitive Psych" above, and
the word "futurist" deleted). I started a language with the idea of
making it Polynesian, but then it went its own way:
http://dedalvs.free.fr/kamakawi/
Incidentally, your url should have a dot where there's a slash:
www.sff.net/people/buckley
Oh, also, when I hit reply it went straight to you, and not to the
list. I know there's a way to fix this, but I'm not sure how... :(
-David
*******************************************************************
"sunly eleSkarez ygralleryf ydZZixelje je ox2mejze."
"No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn."
-Jim Morrison
http://dedalvs.free.fr/
[This message contained attachments]
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Message: 25
Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 15:00:32 -0400
From: Paul Bennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Contemporaneous protolanguages
On Fri, 24 Sep 2004 14:20:27 -0400, Mark J. Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
> Suppose you could go back in time to when Proto-Indo-European
> was spoken in the Caucasus or wherever we think it was these days.
> Would a quick trip down to the Middle East find a culture of people
> speaking Proto-Afroasiatic at the same time? And what would the
> people in Eastern Asia be speaking at this point?
>
> Presumably there wouldn't be anyone at all in the Americas yet . . .
Er. I thught PIE, at least, is dated to much more recently than the
peopling of the Americas. Even taking a date of 10kya for the first
Americans (ignoring the evidence for a much earlier settlement from
Australia), I thought that PIE split up only something like 4kya or 6kya.
This is based (AIUI) on cross-referencing technological evidence from the
protolanguage with the same evidence from various pieces of archaeology.
Certain terms show all the sound-changes from PIE, thus must have been
ancient words, and the items refered to by those terms show up no earlier
than year X, therefore, the language must have been contiguous over a
small enough area to actually *be* contiguous at or around year X.
Paul
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