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There are 15 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1. Re: Synthesis index of conlangs
From: Jörg Rhiemeier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
2. Re: OFFLIST: Re: Topic/Comment, Focus/Background, Given/New.
From: Tom Chappell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
3. OT: Domain help
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
4. Re: OT: Domain help
From: Sylvia Sotomayor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
5. ADMIN: Welcome
From: Jefferson Wilson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
6. Re: ADMIN: Welcome
From: Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
7. Re: ADMIN: Welcome
From: "David J. Peterson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
8. Re: ADMIN: Welcome
From: Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
9. Re: ADMIN: Welcome
From: Jefferson Wilson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
10. Re: ADMIN: Welcome
From: Jefferson Wilson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
11. The Glyphica Arcana
From: Jefferson Wilson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
12. Guinea pigs invited to try this
From: Gary Shannon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
13. Re: OFFLIST: Re: Topic/Comment, Focus/Background, Given/New.
From: Aidan Grey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
14. Re: Synthesis index of conlangs
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
15. Re: ADMIN: Welcome
From: Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 1
Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2005 21:59:53 +0100
From: Jörg Rhiemeier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Synthesis index of conlangs
Hallo!
Peter Bleackley wrote:
> Having done some quick stats on a sample of relay texts, I estimate the
> synthesis index of Khangaþyagon to be 2.59
>
> [...]
The Old Albic Babel Text consists of 143 words with 293 morphemes,
giving a synthesis index of 2.05.
Greetings,
Jörg.
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 2
Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2005 15:44:47 -0800
From: Tom Chappell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: OFFLIST: Re: Topic/Comment, Focus/Background, Given/New.
Hi, and thanks for your reply.
I hope you get this one faster.
Your reply has prompted me to write out some thoughts
I have been having.
If you look into those references by Mark Steedman and
Ivana Kruijff-Korbayova, you'll see they say that most
modern researchers propose that a sentence's
information structure varies along two dimensions; a
"givenness" dimension (given vs new) and an
"aboutness" dimension (topic vs comment).
Some apparently think one of these dimensions just
"splits one end of the other dimension", leading to a
kind of "triangle"; others apparently think the two
dimensions are quite independent, leading to a kind of
"square". Steedman and Kruijff-Korbayova haven't made
up their own minds, apparently; they led an annual
conference basing it on one assumption in 2001(?), and
led it again in 2004(?) basing it on the other
assumption. (If I understood correctly.)
For purposes of conlanging, it seems proper to allow
ourselves the maximum flexibility that hasn't actually
been ruled out; so, I propose some languages may be
allowed to have a "square" information structure.
Another difference between what I was proposing for
conlangs, and what actually takes place in the
professional literature about natlangs, was my
proposing three levels of I.S. instead of only two.
Square example:
There is an example among the references I sent you of
a sentence whose Topic and Comment each have a Ground
and a Focus, according to the linguist who analyzes
it.* The analysis supposes that the sentence answers
an implicit wh-question. The Topic selects the
wh-question, and the Comment selects the answer.
There is, implicitly, a set of possible alternative
answers; their common part is the Ground of the
Comment, and the part unique to the actual alternative
selected is the Focus of the Comment. There is also,
implicitly, a set of alternative questions; their
common part is the Ground of the Topic, and the part
unique to the actual alternative selected is the Focus
of the Topic.
*For three such, see pages 11, 12, and 13 of
http://www.coli.uni-saarland.de/~korbay/Courses/Helsinki05/helsinki.3.pdf
plus the preceding and following pages to make sure
you understand what the heck she's talking about.
Triangular example:
A different guy among those references thinks
sentences have an optional Ground and a mandatory
Focus; the Ground has an optional Tail and an optional
Link. He likens a sentence to a file-update command.
The Focus tells what new information to put on the
file card; whether this merely adds information, or
replaces old information. If there is no Ground, you
just "add a line" to the "current card". If the
Ground contains a Tail, that tells you which "file
card" to update; if the Ground contains no Tail, the
"current card" is to be updated. If the Ground
contains a Link, that tells you which "line" of the
"card" is to be "written over" with the new
information; if the Ground contains no Link, you
simply add the new information to a "new line" on
whichever "card" the Tail, or lack of a Tail,
indicates.
Different Types of Givenness and Newness
One of those references did go into quite an analysis
of
different types of "givenness" and "newness".
They got the idea, I think, from
Prince, E.F. (1981) `Toward a taxonomy of Given-New
information', in: P. Cole (ed.) Radical Pragmatics,
Academic Press, New York, p. 223-255.
This URL
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&q=cache:UuXyuEoysAkJ:ftp://babel.ling.upenn.edu/papers/faculty/ellen_prince/givennew.pdf+author:%22Prince%22+intitle:%22A:+Hi.+B:+Hi.%22
contains a scan of a xerographic copy of Prince's
article.
Here's my own independent distillation of what a few
of the papers had to say about that;
A speaker makes assumptions about:
1) what the addressee knows about, and
2) what the addressee is thinking about.
Now, "knowing about something" and "thinking about
something" are different mental states. (That's
almost a quote from someone; so, I'm plagiarizing --
but I have no choice, because I can't remember who I'm
plagiarizing from.)
An item may be assumed by the speaker to be
Knowledge-Given for the addressee, or to be
Knowledge-New for the addressee; that is, the speaker
may assume the addressee already knows about it, or,
the speaker may assume the addressee does not already
know about it.
An item may also be assumed by the speaker to be
Attention-Given for the addressee, or to be
Attention-New for the addressee; that is, the speaker
may asssume the addressee is currrently thinking about
it, or, the speaker may assume the addressee is not
currently thinking about it.
(Note that, while Knowledge-Given is a permanent
status, once attained, Attention-Given is a status
that can fade during discourse.)
Anyway:
Topics are always Knowledge-Given; but they may be
either Attention-Given or Attention-New.
Comments (or should I say Foci?) are always
Attention-New; but they may be either Knowledge-New or
Knowledge-Given.
If the speaker states the Topic, it is to ensure that
the addressee's attention is correctly directed prior
to the speaker stating the Comment.
If the speaker states a Comment, it is either to
inform the addressee of something the addressee does
not already know, or, to draw the addressee's
attention to something to which, as far as the speaker
knows, the addressee may not currently be thinking
about.
So, you see, if you have a sufficiently complicated
sentence, it could have a Topic (all Knowledge-Given)
which had an Attention-Given part as well as an
Attention-New part; and also have a Comment (all
Attention-New) which had a Knowledge-Given part as
well as a Knowledge-New part.
_That_ one was _my_ idea; if it's hogwash, I have
nobody else to blame.
--- Jonathan Knibb <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Tom,
>
> firstly, thanks very much for your email. Secondly,
> apologies for not having
> picked it up until today - I rarely access this
> account.
>
> Your reply was indeed very helpful (and not I
> suspect by chance). The
> difficulty I have is being able to imagine that
> Given and Topic on the one
> hand, and New and Comment on the other, can fail to
> align in those pairs. In
> your example with the three (or four) pistoleros, I
> agree that I believe
> that there are three men, and therefore this
> information is in a sense
> 'given' for me. However, when I tell you there are
> three men, I do so
> because I believe that you think there are four.
> That is, the men's
> three-ness is news to you, and therefore New
> information in the context of
> my communicative intent to you.
>
> In effect, I'm saying that Given information is
> "what the speaker expects
> the addressee already knows", but not, as you
> suggest, "or already should
> know". If I think you *should* know something, but I
> believe that at present
> you do not know it, then surely I will treat that as
> New information when
> speaking to you.
>
> Your other example was 'the salt sea', where I agree
> that the fact that the
> sea is salty is presumably Given. But is it Comment
> rather than Topic? If
> you are referring to sentences of the form "The salt
> sea rose over the side
> of the ship.", we can accept 'sea' as Topic, but its
> saltiness is relevant
> neither to Topic nor Comment information - in fact,
> I would almost say that
> it is not information at all. The motivation for the
> use of the word 'salt'
> here is literary convention; it serves no
> communicative function.
>
> What about "The salt sea burned my wounds.", where
> the saltiness is
> relevant? This I find very difficult. Part of the
> reason is perhaps that
> sentences of this form are very unusual in
> conversational speech - topical
> referents are almost always referred to using
> pronouns. "Its salt (or just
> 'it') burned my wounds." would be much more likely,
> for example, if the sea
> is Topical. I would almost say that, in
> conversational speech, a referent
> expressed by a full noun phrase is ipso facto not
> Topical. If it were
> topical, what would the speaker's motivation be for
> expressing it thus? And
> in a literary context, it's quite possible I think
> to have a sentence
> without an expressed topic. For example, what is
> "The salt sea burned my
> wounds." really about? I would say that most likely
> it's 'about' my feelings
> or state of mind, less likely the sea or the wounds
> themselves.
>
> Hrm - I need to think about this some more!
>
> Thanks again for your help,
> best wishes,
> Jonathan.
>
>
>
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 3
Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2005 19:14:07 -0500
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: OT: Domain help
Dear all, esp. those of you who have your own domain names:
A friend of mine, who is finally getting started with his very good music,
needs a domain. Or at least we guess he does..... He wants:
-- paypal availability (buttons) so he can sell CDs direct from the site
-- ability to upload snippets of music (I apparently can't upload an MP3 to
my free Tripod site grrr)
He feels: "I can't use one of the shitty 'free' services becuase there is no
way to upload, or have paypal options on those kind of sites. Plus it's not
too professional."
Is that necessarily true? Or has he perhaps just not looked hard enough?
He's found one, on a Service That Shall Remain Nameless, for $8.00 a
_month_-- that seems rather expensivo to me.
Apologies for posting such an OT item, but I've learned that there is a
wealth of knowledge on the List, not just limited to conlangs :-))) Any
help/suggestions will be appreciated. Please reply offlist. Thanks.
Roger Mills
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 4
Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2005 17:01:13 -0800
From: Sylvia Sotomayor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: OT: Domain help
On 12/14/05, Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Dear all, esp. those of you who have your own domain names:
>
> A friend of mine, who is finally getting started with his very good music,
> needs a domain. Or at least we guess he does..... He wants:
> -- paypal availability (buttons) so he can sell CDs direct from the site
> -- ability to upload snippets of music (I apparently can't upload an MP3 to
> my free Tripod site grrr)
>
> He feels: "I can't use one of the shitty 'free' services becuase there is no
> way to upload, or have paypal options on those kind of sites. Plus it's not
> too professional."
>
> Is that necessarily true? Or has he perhaps just not looked hard enough?
>
> He's found one, on a Service That Shall Remain Nameless, for $8.00 a
> _month_-- that seems rather expensivo to me.
>
> Apologies for posting such an OT item, but I've learned that there is a
> wealth of knowledge on the List, not just limited to conlangs :-))) Any
> help/suggestions will be appreciated. Please reply offlist. Thanks.
>
> Roger Mills
>
Hmm. The service I use for terjemar.net costs $7/month, or $72/year.
It's jvds.com, and I have a basic shared host account. It comes with
lots of bandwidth and disk space and is linux based. Brinkster.com,
which hosts a MS based website for me and a friend, offers sites for
as low as $4.95/month, and they now claim to support linux, too. I
recommend either.
-Sylvia
--
Sylvia Sotomayor
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.terjemar.net
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 5
Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2005 18:29:49 -0700
From: Jefferson Wilson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: ADMIN: Welcome
> Home page:
> There is no home page for CONLANG as such, but http://www.conlanglinks.tk
> is a very useful starting place.
I tried to access this page and got:
Forbidden
You don't have permission to access /escape/conlanglinks/ on this
server.
I would also note that there's no accessible information on how
to subscribe to this list. I only got here because someone else
told me.
--
Jefferson
http://www.picotech.net/~jeff_wilson63/myths/
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 6
Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2005 03:58:48 +0100
From: Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: ADMIN: Welcome
Hi!
Welcome to the list!
Jefferson Wilson writes:
> > Home page:
> > There is no home page for CONLANG as such, but http://www.conlanglinks.tk
> > is a very useful starting place.
>
> I tried to access this page and got:
>
> Forbidden
> You don't have permission to access /escape/conlanglinks/ on this
> server.
Unfortunately, it seems to often be broken. I haven't tried the page
recently, but remember errors a while ago, but also that it worked
again a while later. But let's wait for someone to comment who knows
more.
> I would also note that there's no accessible information on how to
> subscribe to this list. I only got here because someone else told me.
Hm? Interesting. How did you get to know about the list? Most
sources link to the list archives page where there's another link
labelled 'Join or leave the list'. The archives' page is:
http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/conlang.html
**Henrik
(Master of Instrumentality)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 7
Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2005 18:47:16 -0800
From: "David J. Peterson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: ADMIN: Welcome
Here are some links I have:
http://dedalvs.free.fr/links.html
Also, did you look at the Conlang FAQ? It tells you how to
subscribe to the list:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/9219/conlangfaq.html
Not sure how accessible it is via google search, though... It'd be
a nice one to come up second or third when you type "conlang"
or "language creation" into Google... Oh, it's fourth! (A sub-
heading.)
-David
*******************************************************************
"A male love inevivi i'ala'i oku i ue pokulu'ume o heki a."
"No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn."
-Jim Morrison
http://dedalvs.free.fr/
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 8
Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2005 04:08:30 +0100
From: Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: ADMIN: Welcome
Hi!
What's really bad about the current denial of robots to the Conlang
archives page is that Google doesn't list it at all. It used to be
hit #1. So we're completely invisible now.
As I mentioned recently, I'm soon going to start to install a mirror
of the Conlang archives, linking back to Brown's Conlang page. We
should call that the official home page of the list then, adjust all
the links we get hold of, and hope Google finds us again soon.
Oh my!
**Henrik
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 9
Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2005 21:22:44 -0700
From: Jefferson Wilson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: ADMIN: Welcome
Henrik Theiling wrote:
>>I would also note that there's no accessible information on how to
>>subscribe to this list. I only got here because someone else told me.
>
> Hm? Interesting. How did you get to know about the list? Most
> sources link to the list archives page where there's another link
> labelled 'Join or leave the list'. The archives' page is:
I belong to the conculture and langmaker2 lists on Yahoo Groups.
Conlang gets mentioned quite a bit.
> http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/conlang.html
I believe one time I tried to join (I've tried to join conlang at
least five times) it was through the form on
http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=conlang&A=1
and it ended up bouncing my application. I notice there's no
information on either page about joining via email.
--
Jefferson
http://www.picotech.net/~jeff_wilson63/myths/
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 10
Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2005 21:22:27 -0700
From: Jefferson Wilson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: ADMIN: Welcome
David J. Peterson wrote:
> Also, did you look at the Conlang FAQ? It tells you how to
> subscribe to the list:
>
> http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/9219/conlangfaq.html
The subscription information on this page is wrong.
--
Jefferson
http://www.picotech.net/~jeff_wilson63/rpg/
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 11
Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2005 21:47:42 -0700
From: Jefferson Wilson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: The Glyphica Arcana
My current conlang project is The Glyphica Arcana
(http://www.meanspc.com/~jeff_wilson63/myths/BabelTarot.html).
This is a completely written (no verbal form) ideographic
language intended for decorations, ceremonial and magical
inscriptions, and the like.
Recently I've completely redone the grammar of the script, and I
hope to write full instructions on how everything is used
shortly. Right now I'm (re-)translating the Babel text.
(Translations done since the grammar update have symbol links and
tooltip translations.) My biggest problem right now is figuring
out how to distinguish elements in phrases from elements in the
main sentence. Since the language marks whether an element is
subject, direct object, or indirect object, I've dispensed with
active/passive/etc. voice. Any opinions on this?
Any and all comments and feedback are welcome.
(I think my my translation of the One Ring couplet from _The Lord
of the Ring_ is particularly nice. You can find it at the very
end of the above page.)
--
Jefferson
http://www.picotech.net/~jeff_wilson63/myths/
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 12
Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2005 21:00:28 -0800
From: Gary Shannon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Guinea pigs invited to try this
OK, if anyone is game to give this a try, I've
completed the first round of lessons and the first
review quiz for a pictures-only learning site for the
conlang Elomi.
Regardless of a person's L1 they _should_ be able to
start at lesson one and learn enough Elomi to pass the
test on page 7 of the site.
If anyone is willing to try, I'd love to hear feedback
about any problems people encounter, or words that are
not understood from the illustrations, etc.
lessons start at http://fiziwig.com/pix/imupix01.html
Page 7 is the quiz. (Fear not: answers are provided
for each question.)
--gary
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 13
Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2005 21:23:56 -0800
From: Aidan Grey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: OFFLIST: Re: Topic/Comment, Focus/Background, Given/New.
Hi Tom!
This got sent to me on accident, I think. Just a heads up!
Aidan
Tom Chappell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Hi, and thanks for your reply.
I hope you get this one faster.
Your reply has prompted me to write out some thoughts
I have been having.
If you look into those references by Mark Steedman and
Ivana Kruijff-Korbayova, you'll see they say that most
modern researchers propose that a sentence's
information structure varies along two dimensions; a
"givenness" dimension (given vs new) and an
"aboutness" dimension (topic vs comment).
Some apparently think one of these dimensions just
"splits one end of the other dimension", leading to a
kind of "triangle"; others apparently think the two
dimensions are quite independent, leading to a kind of
"square". Steedman and Kruijff-Korbayova haven't made
up their own minds, apparently; they led an annual
conference basing it on one assumption in 2001(?), and
led it again in 2004(?) basing it on the other
assumption. (If I understood correctly.)
For purposes of conlanging, it seems proper to allow
ourselves the maximum flexibility that hasn't actually
been ruled out; so, I propose some languages may be
allowed to have a "square" information structure.
Another difference between what I was proposing for
conlangs, and what actually takes place in the
professional literature about natlangs, was my
proposing three levels of I.S. instead of only two.
Square example:
There is an example among the references I sent you of
a sentence whose Topic and Comment each have a Ground
and a Focus, according to the linguist who analyzes
it.* The analysis supposes that the sentence answers
an implicit wh-question. The Topic selects the
wh-question, and the Comment selects the answer.
There is, implicitly, a set of possible alternative
answers; their common part is the Ground of the
Comment, and the part unique to the actual alternative
selected is the Focus of the Comment. There is also,
implicitly, a set of alternative questions; their
common part is the Ground of the Topic, and the part
unique to the actual alternative selected is the Focus
of the Topic.
*For three such, see pages 11, 12, and 13 of
http://www.coli.uni-saarland.de/~korbay/Courses/Helsinki05/helsinki.3.pdf
plus the preceding and following pages to make sure
you understand what the heck she's talking about.
Triangular example:
A different guy among those references thinks
sentences have an optional Ground and a mandatory
Focus; the Ground has an optional Tail and an optional
Link. He likens a sentence to a file-update command.
The Focus tells what new information to put on the
file card; whether this merely adds information, or
replaces old information. If there is no Ground, you
just "add a line" to the "current card". If the
Ground contains a Tail, that tells you which "file
card" to update; if the Ground contains no Tail, the
"current card" is to be updated. If the Ground
contains a Link, that tells you which "line" of the
"card" is to be "written over" with the new
information; if the Ground contains no Link, you
simply add the new information to a "new line" on
whichever "card" the Tail, or lack of a Tail,
indicates.
Different Types of Givenness and Newness
One of those references did go into quite an analysis
of
different types of "givenness" and "newness".
They got the idea, I think, from
Prince, E.F. (1981) `Toward a taxonomy of Given-New
information', in: P. Cole (ed.) Radical Pragmatics,
Academic Press, New York, p. 223-255.
This URL
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&q=cache:UuXyuEoysAkJ:ftp://babel.ling.upenn.edu/papers/faculty/ellen_prince/givennew.pdf+author:%22Prince%22+intitle:%22A:+Hi.+B:+Hi.%22
contains a scan of a xerographic copy of Prince's
article.
Here's my own independent distillation of what a few
of the papers had to say about that;
A speaker makes assumptions about:
1) what the addressee knows about, and
2) what the addressee is thinking about.
Now, "knowing about something" and "thinking about
something" are different mental states. (That's
almost a quote from someone; so, I'm plagiarizing --
but I have no choice, because I can't remember who I'm
plagiarizing from.)
An item may be assumed by the speaker to be
Knowledge-Given for the addressee, or to be
Knowledge-New for the addressee; that is, the speaker
may assume the addressee already knows about it, or,
the speaker may assume the addressee does not already
know about it.
An item may also be assumed by the speaker to be
Attention-Given for the addressee, or to be
Attention-New for the addressee; that is, the speaker
may asssume the addressee is currrently thinking about
it, or, the speaker may assume the addressee is not
currently thinking about it.
(Note that, while Knowledge-Given is a permanent
status, once attained, Attention-Given is a status
that can fade during discourse.)
Anyway:
Topics are always Knowledge-Given; but they may be
either Attention-Given or Attention-New.
Comments (or should I say Foci?) are always
Attention-New; but they may be either Knowledge-New or
Knowledge-Given.
If the speaker states the Topic, it is to ensure that
the addressee's attention is correctly directed prior
to the speaker stating the Comment.
If the speaker states a Comment, it is either to
inform the addressee of something the addressee does
not already know, or, to draw the addressee's
attention to something to which, as far as the speaker
knows, the addressee may not currently be thinking
about.
So, you see, if you have a sufficiently complicated
sentence, it could have a Topic (all Knowledge-Given)
which had an Attention-Given part as well as an
Attention-New part; and also have a Comment (all
Attention-New) which had a Knowledge-Given part as
well as a Knowledge-New part.
_That_ one was _my_ idea; if it's hogwash, I have
nobody else to blame.
--- Jonathan Knibb wrote:
> Tom,
>
> firstly, thanks very much for your email. Secondly,
> apologies for not having
> picked it up until today - I rarely access this
> account.
>
> Your reply was indeed very helpful (and not I
> suspect by chance). The
> difficulty I have is being able to imagine that
> Given and Topic on the one
> hand, and New and Comment on the other, can fail to
> align in those pairs. In
> your example with the three (or four) pistoleros, I
> agree that I believe
> that there are three men, and therefore this
> information is in a sense
> 'given' for me. However, when I tell you there are
> three men, I do so
> because I believe that you think there are four.
> That is, the men's
> three-ness is news to you, and therefore New
> information in the context of
> my communicative intent to you.
>
> In effect, I'm saying that Given information is
> "what the speaker expects
> the addressee already knows", but not, as you
> suggest, "or already should
> know". If I think you *should* know something, but I
> believe that at present
> you do not know it, then surely I will treat that as
> New information when
> speaking to you.
>
> Your other example was 'the salt sea', where I agree
> that the fact that the
> sea is salty is presumably Given. But is it Comment
> rather than Topic? If
> you are referring to sentences of the form "The salt
> sea rose over the side
> of the ship.", we can accept 'sea' as Topic, but its
> saltiness is relevant
> neither to Topic nor Comment information - in fact,
> I would almost say that
> it is not information at all. The motivation for the
> use of the word 'salt'
> here is literary convention; it serves no
> communicative function.
>
> What about "The salt sea burned my wounds.", where
> the saltiness is
> relevant? This I find very difficult. Part of the
> reason is perhaps that
> sentences of this form are very unusual in
> conversational speech - topical
> referents are almost always referred to using
> pronouns. "Its salt (or just
> 'it') burned my wounds." would be much more likely,
> for example, if the sea
> is Topical. I would almost say that, in
> conversational speech, a referent
> expressed by a full noun phrase is ipso facto not
> Topical. If it were
> topical, what would the speaker's motivation be for
> expressing it thus? And
> in a literary context, it's quite possible I think
> to have a sentence
> without an expressed topic. For example, what is
> "The salt sea burned my
> wounds." really about? I would say that most likely
> it's 'about' my feelings
> or state of mind, less likely the sea or the wounds
> themselves.
>
> Hrm - I need to think about this some more!
>
> Thanks again for your help,
> best wishes,
> Jonathan.
>
>
>
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[This message contained attachments]
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Message: 14
Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2005 01:07:00 -0500
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Synthesis index of conlangs
OK- The Kash North Wind and Sun text has 79 words, 134 morphemes...1.696
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Message: 15
Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2005 17:00:27 +0100
From: Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: ADMIN: Welcome
Hi!
Jefferson Wilson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>...
> > http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/conlang.html
>
> I believe one time I tried to join (I've tried to join conlang at
> least five times) it was through the form on
> http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=conlang&A=1 and
> it ended up bouncing my application. I notice there's no information
> on either page about joining via email.
Hmm, you're right. I've updated the information.
**Henrik
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