There are 15 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1.1. Re: Fith Texts
From: Miles Forster
1.2. Re: Fith Texts
From: Alex Fink
1.3. Re: Fith Texts
From: Logan Kearsley
1.4. Re: Fith Texts
From: And Rosta
2a. Introduction w/conlang
From: Brian Rice
2b. Re: Introduction w/conlang
From: Arthaey Angosii
2c. Re: Introduction w/conlang
From: Brian Rice
2d. Re: Introduction w/conlang
From: Logan Kearsley
2e. Re: Introduction w/conlang
From: Тоłе МаьіЛеƒіљ
2f. Re: Introduction w/conlang
From: Brian Rice
2g. Re: Introduction w/conlang
From: Brian Rice
2h. Re: Introduction w/conlang
From: Тоłе МаьіЛеƒіљ
2i. Re: Introduction w/conlang
From: MorphemeAddict
2j. Re: Introduction w/conlang
From: Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets
3a. Re: Destroying the noun/verb distinction
From: Iuhan Culmærija
Messages
________________________________________________________________________
1.1. Re: Fith Texts
Posted by: "Miles Forster" [email protected]
Date: Mon Apr 16, 2012 3:36 pm ((PDT))
Right, thanks. I think I do understand the LIFO grammar. However, I
don't know whether the LIFO grammar makes it so that there can only be
one way to do certain things like relative clauses or connectives. Also,
if I am to make my own LIFO conlang, will people still believe it to be
impossible to learn for humans? I think I'd definitely try to keep as
much of what Fith has to make sure I'm not "cheating". That means I'd
keep the stack manipulation devices it has, but maybe change some or add
some. I'd also completely redo most of the phonology and dictionary, I
assume. I'll have to ponder all this further.
�Miles
Am 17.04.2012 00:30, schrieb David Peterson:
> Well, Fith is based on LIFO grammar, which is a thing, so I'd probably start
> there and learn what I could about that (though if it were *actually* me,
> it'd probably be beyond me [never was much of a coding person]). If you learn
> what you can about LIFO, it may give you more insight to what's already been
> posted about Fith�may allow you to fill in the gaps. Once you have a good
> handle of it, you may be able to create your own instantiation. After all,
> the idea is the grammar; no one says Fith is the only that can take a shot at
> it. Fith is one possibility given a LIFO base. There could probably be
> hundreds of conlangs that use the same base but approach things a little
> differently. I think it'd be great to see more of them.
>
> David Peterson
> LCS President
> [email protected]
> www.conlang.org
>
> On Apr 16, 2012, at 3:22 PM, Miles Forster wrote:
>
>> Oh! =( That is very sad news. I had no idea. Thank you for telling me that.
>> Now what? Give up on the project of learning Fith? Take the information I
>> have and make my own version of it? (Wouldn't be the worst case for me,
>> since I don't like its current Phonology much). The problem with that would
>> be that I have very little information about the grammar apart from the
>> website, and i doesn't explain any details. What what you do in my situation?
>>
>> �Miles
>>
>> Am 17.04.2012 00:10, schrieb David Peterson:
>>> I'm pretty certain Jeff isn't on the Conlang-L anymore, if you intended for
>>> him to actually see your previous message. If you're contacting him
>>> directly, I think there's a very good chance he won't respond to you. He's
>>> pretty much given up conlanging�and the conlanging community�for good. I'd
>>> say it's even money that either: (a) he never read your message (because
>>> he's got a very time-consuming job and is always *extremely* busy), or (b)
>>> he read your message and does not intend to respond.
>>>
>>> David Peterson
>>> LCS President
>>> [email protected]
>>> www.conlang.org
>>>
>>> On Apr 16, 2012, at 2:55 PM, Miles Forster wrote:
>>>
>>>> Is Jeffrey Henning usually too busy to read mails? Or might there be a
>>>> different reason that I'm not getting any responses? I find this a bit
>>>> frustrating; my motivation for learning this language *right now* is very
>>>> high, yet the help I'm receiving is near null. (Excepting all those that
>>>> did try to help me. It's appreciated.). So does anybody know more than me
>>>> here? What else might I try?
>>>>
>>>> �Miles
>>>>
>>>> Am 14.04.2012 00:36, schrieb Miles Forster:
>>>>> Still no answer. (I'm impatient, read below)
>>>>>
>>>>> Okay, cards on the table. I want to learn Fith. When someone says
>>>>> something is impossible, I take that as a challenge.
>>>>> Dear Jeffrey Henning, Author of Fith, if you have any desire for someone
>>>>> else to learn your language and if your time schedule allows for it,
>>>>> could you please point me to/send me the dictionary file, and anything
>>>>> else I might need. I'm sure it's not a common occurence that someone
>>>>> decides to learn someone else's conlang, so I'd imagine that you'd
>>>>> approve of this as well. The explanations on the website are not enough
>>>>> in my opinion to make sense of all the details of Fith. Also, I'd very
>>>>> much appreciate an IPA equivalent for the letters of Fith, because some
>>>>> of the explanations again aren't clear enough. Please let me know what
>>>>> you think. (I have someone else who would learn Fith along with me, so
>>>>> your conlang will have two to three times as many speakers as most others
>>>>> =) ).
>>>>> Thank you.
>>>>>
>>>>> Am 13.04.2012 16:32, schrieb Miles Forster:
>>>>>> I'd also very much like to see it.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> �M
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Am 13.04.2012 00:45, schrieb MorphemeAddict:
>>>>>>> Along the same lines, does anyone have the Fith dictionary?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> stevo
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Thu, Apr 12, 2012 at 5:57 PM, Miles Forster<[email protected]>
>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Hi,
>>>>>>>> have any of the usual texts been translated into Fith? I'm thinking of
>>>>>>>> something like the Babel text. If not, are there any original works in
>>>>>>>> Fith
>>>>>>>> with English transcripts? I'd like to record some Fith text and listen
>>>>>>>> to
>>>>>>>> it.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> --
>>>>>>>> .i da xamgu ganse fi no na'ebo lo risna
>>>>>>>> .i lo vajrai cu nonselji'u lo kanla
>>>>>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> .i da xamgu ganse fi no na'ebo lo risna
>>>> .i lo vajrai cu nonselji'u lo kanla
>>
>> --
>> .i da xamgu ganse fi no na'ebo lo risna
>> .i lo vajrai cu nonselji'u lo kanla
--
.i da xamgu ganse fi no na'ebo lo risna
.i lo vajrai cu nonselji'u lo kanla
Messages in this topic (40)
________________________________________________________________________
1.2. Re: Fith Texts
Posted by: "Alex Fink" [email protected]
Date: Mon Apr 16, 2012 3:43 pm ((PDT))
On Tue, 17 Apr 2012 00:22:30 +0200, Miles Forster <[email protected]> wrote:
>Oh! =( That is very sad news. I had no idea. Thank you for telling me
>that. Now what? Give up on the project of learning Fith? Take the
>information I have and make my own version of it? (Wouldn't be the worst
>case for me, since I don't like its current Phonology much). The problem
>with that would be that I have very little information about the grammar
>apart from the website, and i doesn't explain any details. What what you
>do in my situation?
If I were in your situation, on a Fith kick, I don't think I'd be able to keep
myself from trying to sketch a daughter language of Fith. That'd give you the
chance to rectify the phonology, for instance (I don't really like it myself
either; not only are the nasal clusters ungainly and the rest too Englishesque,
but this "let's arrange that our language has our favourite number of phonemes"
thing is loony), but give you a good way to produce lexicon (Fith's is quite
large, however it was produced). And it would be quite interesting to work out
how stack-based constructions might grammaticalise and/or analogise.
Alex
Messages in this topic (40)
________________________________________________________________________
1.3. Re: Fith Texts
Posted by: "Logan Kearsley" [email protected]
Date: Mon Apr 16, 2012 4:14 pm ((PDT))
On 16 April 2012 16:36, Miles Forster <[email protected]> wrote:
> Right, thanks. I think I do understand the LIFO grammar. However, I don't
> know whether the LIFO grammar makes it so that there can only be one way to
> do certain things like relative clauses or connectives.
I don't believe it does, although there are some ways of doing each
that are more "natural" fits for LIFO grammar than others. E.g.,
conjunctions would most naturally be postfix stack operators
essentially indistinguishable from predicates that take the top two
items off the stack and place the compound of them back on the stack.
If I were adding relative clauses, I'd use an extra stack operator
that combines a clause with a resumptive pronoun and a noun from the
top of the stack; that could be analyzed either as an extra stack
conjunction or as a postposition.
> Also, if I am to make my own LIFO conlang, will people still believe it to be
> impossible to learn for humans?
Some people will, unless you actually learn it to fluency and prove us wrong.
It turns out that stack-based languages have a homomorphism to
functional languages, so if you can understand the mapping you can
probably get some insight into how to handle various features from all
the work that's been done on languages based on predicate calculus
(including genuine scholarly work on predicate-calculus approaches to
handling semantics)
As a lover of FORTH, I offer my services as a stack-grammar consultant
if you find that at all useful. Actually, if you want to have more
usage opportunities to help out with learning a Fith-derived language,
I think it'd be fun to try out a collaborative project.
-l.
Messages in this topic (40)
________________________________________________________________________
1.4. Re: Fith Texts
Posted by: "And Rosta" [email protected]
Date: Tue Apr 17, 2012 1:27 am ((PDT))
On 16 April 2012 16:36, Miles Forster<[email protected]> wrote:
> Also, if I am to make my own LIFO conlang, will people still believe it to be
> impossible to learn for humans?
The notion that natlangs are probably not LIFO is a Conlang myth. On the
contrary, natlangs probably are LIFO. So achieving fluency in a LIFO conlang
would surprise only those who subscribe to this Conlang myth.
The weirdnesses of Fith are to be found among the stack operators, which are
documented online. I myself wouldn't claim that those are completely unusable,
but I would claim that their usability correlates with the brainpower (i.e.
mental brute-strength) of the user -- which is not true for ordinary natlang
processing.
--And.
Messages in this topic (40)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
2a. Introduction w/conlang
Posted by: "Brian Rice" [email protected]
Date: Mon Apr 16, 2012 3:59 pm ((PDT))
Dear Conlangers,
I'll introduce myself and my project, to contextualize what I try to
contribute and ask here. I'm looking for feedback on what I consider to be
a single (but somewhat in flux) project. I did meet Arthaey in person to
try to get a sense for how to approach the community and understand a
little bit of how this might be perceived, and hopefully that smooths out
interactions.
My background is that of mathematics, logic, and philosophy, and my
profession is software development and architecture. My primary spoken
language is American English (in various regions) and I have in the past
learned Spanish and Mandarin Chinese to a modestly fluent degree, and
learned the principles of other languages over time. I am mostly known
online for some programming language designs (and know more programming
language ideas than the 99th percentile of the programming community), but
I do not feel that they adequately describe the scope of my intent, even if
they inform it. I consider my favorite reading material in the subject to
come from Stanford's Center for the Study of Logic and Information:
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/ and the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
My overall goal: To create a language *toolset* for enhancing existing
rhetoric (see also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetoric) and
re-framing existing
discourse and dialog. This is an inherently (meta-)political idea, so the
desire first of all is for it to sound natural but be relatively
incremental to teach and acquire. The natural problem in this forum is to
avoid discussing actual politics and instead confine my/ourselves to
meta-politics, that is, how do people make their concerns/emotions known
accurately (or even overblown to the desired degree, because that's
valid!). I want to enable people to fine-tune the effects of their speech,
to be able to add nuance by spending an extra syllable or two instead of a
paragraph or spiral / tangent discussion when a single word or phrase is
merely mis-employed.
My hidden/long-standing assumptions (feel free to challenge or add to this,
to assist my learning/improvement on it): that a higher degree/palette of
inflections enables the kind of nuance that avoids misunderstanding or
allows one to correct or identify assumptions that others hold. I want
political actors (scales down to "people in polite company") to be able to
distinguish *my* experience or feeling on a subject matter from *your*
experience
of the same. Or instead of distinctions, one might draw comparisons by
mapping one's interpretation of the world onto the employed language of the
other to indicate interpretation. I furthermore want to make distinctions
and comparisons at any point in the construction of a phrase or thought or
well after that thought was considered complete, to reconsider variations
on it in a more explicit way. The purpose of this project is (to simplify
things) an introvert's way of *crafting* prose interactively and over a
long period of time. I also want to emphasize a phenomenological approach
to rhetoric, where the ontological perspective of a sentence may be
re-adjusted in a manifest rather than an indirect way.
I'll try to employ the terminology of the conlang FAQ (
http://www.frathwiki.com/Conlang-L_FAQ) to frame/clarify my intentions as
follows.
- My language is currently a "sketchlang" but had a couple of Latin
formulations in its first incarnation.
- I am *not* interested in artlang-ing as an end (but perhaps as a means
as marketing). "conculture" and "conworlds" are also not my primary goal,
except in envisioning how I would like to improve existing discourses. I
don't pretend to know what effect my language would have on the world if
widely known, but I have hopes (even at my less than naive age).
- I am *not* interested in an auxlang per se, except as a didactic
approach for what I would like to introduce.
- I am *not *interested in logical languages per se. Mathematical and
logical notations and formalisms are great tools but have huge usability
concerns (IMO) and are challenging to exercise rhetorically.
- I *am* interested in (what Arthaey helped term) a "mixin language"
(perhaps mixlang would be appropriate). I am unsure whether conlang-l or
the auxlang forum are best for discussing this, but it seemed best to start
here. Basically, in existing terminology, the primary purpose of the
"platonic ideal" of the auxlang variant would be to teach the pidginized
version for a specific language and have that influence discourse/rhetoric.
- I do *not *think my language will impress most or even many of you,
and will try not to market it here. My framework contains compromises, and
the idea is to have/teach an adaptable toolset for rhetorical augmentation.
I expect that it will sound ridiculous most of the time while the initial
ideas are being sorted out.
- I *am* interested in it being natural / natlang-oriented, but when
applied it'd occupy a pidgin sound, to avoid confusion with existing words
and turns of phrase. Whether such a language application can survive
regional or sub-cultural dialects is unknown but should be explored.
The principles I'd like to form the core are as follows:
- Reduce the number of distinct parts of speech in the target language
as considered within the "ideal" form of the language, and make each word /
grammatical category achievable by inflection or juxtaposition.
- Inflection / modification of words should happen in relatively
orthogonal dimensions with each having at most 4 discrete values. (Some
dimensions might deserve a continuous value, to be mapped specifically to
the vowel space.)
- Each phoneme/letter should be able to encode one or two dimensions,
which means to be selectable from a set of 4 or 16 (4x4) grouped values.
- The alphabet (or phonemic layout) should be grouped into static sets
of 4x4 values. Vowels would follow a slightly artificial interpretation of
the IPA's map of the human vocal tract there. Consonants
and diphthongs would have two similar groups. Tones form a relatively
natural set of 4 which could be optionally used by this toolset if suitable
for the target language/people.
- Finally, dimensions are mapped onto these phonemes sets into either
prefix or suffix syllables or onto adjacent words according to the fit in
the target language's grammar.
Example dimensions with values:
- Time (past, present, future, interrogative)
- Person (first, second, third, interrogative)
- Number of arguments (0-adic, monadic, dyadic, variadic) as "number of
expressions this acts on right now". This makes something noun-like,
adjective/adverb-like, or conjunctive.
- Number (singular, dual, plural, interrogative)
- Case (nominative, accusative, dative, locative)
- Aspect (static, simple, progressive, perfect)
For example, a suffix system might choose a consonant from the first group,
a vowel, and a consonant from the second group to make a set of sounds
which have 16^3 = 4096 inflection possibilities. Alternatively, one might
form a system of article-substitutable words with one consonant and one
vowel, yielding 16^2 = 256 inflection possibilities. (N.B. I'm
avoiding/deferring a specific example mapping for now while I lay out the
principles.)
I first formalized this approach in 1993 after a number of discarded
attempts at solving/generalizing the problem of discourse enhancement, and
then set it aside for years while engaging in self-study of various
textbooks including the efforts corralled by Stanford. This language has
not had a name. I have in the past used the LOZENGE Unicode symbol ◊ for
its association with modal logic to indicate quantification of possibility,
but could certainly use better suggestions.
I'll clarify by this symbol that I mean it to be a kind of operator on a
language, so that the pidgin dialect of English and ◊ might be named
"English◊" or "English◊PoliSci" and not be equivalent to say "Turkish◊" or
"Arabic◊PoliSci"; the effects of pidginization would depend upon the target
or culture who adopted it.
I intend to publish online documentation (at a website, with a blog and
discussion forum of some type that I feel like supporting) and tools to
support this idea, and am looking for feedback to help *fix* and *refine* the
idea into some kind of viability, no matter how modest. I think the
description above is the best draft so far of a manifesto for it.
--
-Brian T. Rice
Messages in this topic (10)
________________________________________________________________________
2b. Re: Introduction w/conlang
Posted by: "Arthaey Angosii" [email protected]
Date: Mon Apr 16, 2012 4:10 pm ((PDT))
Hi Brian, and welcome to CONLANG-L!
Could you provide some examples? It might make it easier to follow. :)
--
AA
http://conlang.arthaey.com
Messages in this topic (10)
________________________________________________________________________
2c. Re: Introduction w/conlang
Posted by: "Brian Rice" [email protected]
Date: Mon Apr 16, 2012 4:14 pm ((PDT))
I will. I'm working on that locally but wanted to lead those examples with
the idea/assumptions first (and hopefully to identify a good label for
tagging discussions). It doesn't help that my old notes are all on paper
and kind of in a shorthand. :p (Present self as usual looks on the past
self with bemusement.)
On Mon, Apr 16, 2012 at 4:10 PM, Arthaey Angosii <[email protected]> wrote:
> Hi Brian, and welcome to CONLANG-L!
>
> Could you provide some examples? It might make it easier to follow. :)
>
>
> --
> AA
>
> http://conlang.arthaey.com
>
--
-Brian T. Rice
Messages in this topic (10)
________________________________________________________________________
2d. Re: Introduction w/conlang
Posted by: "Logan Kearsley" [email protected]
Date: Mon Apr 16, 2012 4:23 pm ((PDT))
On 16 April 2012 16:58, Brian Rice <[email protected]> wrote:
> I am mostly known
> online for some programming language designs (and know more programming
> language ideas than the 99th percentile of the programming community), but
> I do not feel that they adequately describe the scope of my intent, even if
> they inform it.
Hm. I may have to google you now, as I've recently caught the language
design and implementation bug myself.
> My overall goal: To create a language *toolset* for enhancing existing
> rhetoric (see also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetoric) and
> re-framing existing discourse and dialog.
To summarize what I think this means from the rest of your
explanation- you're trying to come up with a set of operators to apply
to existing natural languages that will result in a derived language /
dialect / register / whatever with particular properties of your
design?
> My hidden/long-standing assumptions (feel free to challenge or add to this,
> to assist my learning/improvement on it): that a higher degree/palette of
> inflections enables the kind of nuance that avoids misunderstanding or
> allows one to correct or identify assumptions that others hold.
I suspect you will run into what I think of as "the Laadan problem":
given access to more explicit nuance, people will use it differently
than intended, because sometimes people want ambiguity. They will lie
with it, or, more generously, metaphorically extend it so it's just as
ambiguous as whatever you started out with, and that will ruin things
for everyone who's trying to use it rigorously because their listeners
will not be able to assume the rigorous interpretation.
-l.
Messages in this topic (10)
________________________________________________________________________
2e. Re: Introduction w/conlang
Posted by: "Тоłе МаьіЛеƒіљ" [email protected]
Date: Mon Apr 16, 2012 4:27 pm ((PDT))
By Weloneqi, how do you curse in your language? And would it be possible
to curse so well that the listener would see the aura of Weloneqi's home
appear around your head?
On 17.04.2012 00:58, Brian Rice wrote:
> I first formalized this approach in 1993 after a number of discarded
> attempts at solving/generalizing the problem of discourse enhancement, and
> then set it aside for years while engaging in self-study of various
> textbooks including the efforts corralled by Stanford. This language has
> not had a name. I have in the past used the LOZENGE Unicode symbol ◊ for
> its association with modal logic to indicate quantification of possibility,
> but could certainly use better suggestions.
>
> I'll clarify by this symbol that I mean it to be a kind of operator on a
> language, so that the pidgin dialect of English and ◊ might be named
> "English◊" or "English◊PoliSci" and not be equivalent to say "Turkish◊" or
> "Arabic◊PoliSci"; the effects of pidginization would depend upon the target
> or culture who adopted it.
>
> I intend to publish online documentation (at a website, with a blog and
> discussion forum of some type that I feel like supporting) and tools to
> support this idea, and am looking for feedback to help *fix* and *refine* the
> idea into some kind of viability, no matter how modest. I think the
> description above is the best draft so far of a manifesto for it.
>
--
Тоłе МаьіЛеƒіљ МаьіПаніљ
Δебјані ҩнІљте Ьлеј
http://illte.conlang.org/ http://delang.conlang.org/
___
«Панемі ƒłе δеьлеј ҩнδеьомеłс» - анƕомі
Messages in this topic (10)
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2f. Re: Introduction w/conlang
Posted by: "Brian Rice" [email protected]
Date: Mon Apr 16, 2012 4:31 pm ((PDT))
On Mon, Apr 16, 2012 at 4:23 PM, Logan Kearsley <[email protected]>wrote:
> On 16 April 2012 16:58, Brian Rice <[email protected]> wrote:
> > I am mostly known
> > online for some programming language designs (and know more programming
> > language ideas than the 99th percentile of the programming community),
> but
> > I do not feel that they adequately describe the scope of my intent, even
> if
> > they inform it.
>
> Hm. I may have to google you now, as I've recently caught the language
> design and implementation bug myself.
>
Sure. "briantrice", associated with Slate, Squeak, Common Lisp, Maude, and
Atomo/Atomy more recently. Slate is the one with my most distinct
fingerprint.
> > My overall goal: To create a language *toolset* for enhancing existing
> > rhetoric (see also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetoric) and
> > re-framing existing discourse and dialog.
>
> To summarize what I think this means from the rest of your
> explanation- you're trying to come up with a set of operators to apply
> to existing natural languages that will result in a derived language /
> dialect / register / whatever with particular properties of your
> design?
Yes. Grammatical categories as orthogonal-ish dimensions, phoneme systems
for making a dimension fit/encode into speech/writing, and an adopted
mapping between them.
> > My hidden/long-standing assumptions (feel free to challenge or add to
> this,
> > to assist my learning/improvement on it): that a higher degree/palette of
> > inflections enables the kind of nuance that avoids misunderstanding or
> > allows one to correct or identify assumptions that others hold.
>
> I suspect you will run into what I think of as "the Laadan problem":
> given access to more explicit nuance, people will use it differently
> than intended, because sometimes people want ambiguity. They will lie
> with it, or, more generously, metaphorically extend it so it's just as
> ambiguous as whatever you started out with, and that will ruin things
> for everyone who's trying to use it rigorously because their listeners
> will not be able to assume the rigorous interpretation.
>
I forgot about the term, but agree that I will hit this problem, and I kind
of welcome it. I think it would be great to let people mash it up or make
vague slang most of the time. I don't have a good answer for that, but will
start the process of discovery by putting out examples and trying some
conversations that way to see how it works.
I think lying and exaggeration and distortion have as much place in this
idea as precise language. I don't want to "fix" or "perfect" discourse, but
to arm it with better tools for doing what people want with it, no matter
how different they are.
--
-Brian T. Rice
Messages in this topic (10)
________________________________________________________________________
2g. Re: Introduction w/conlang
Posted by: "Brian Rice" [email protected]
Date: Mon Apr 16, 2012 4:35 pm ((PDT))
On Mon, Apr 16, 2012 at 4:27 PM, Тоłе МаьіЛеƒіљ МаьіПаніљ <
[email protected]> wrote:
> By Weloneqi, how do you curse in your language? And would it be possible
> to curse so well that the listener would see the aura of Weloneqi's home
> appear around your head?
Nice. :-) Short answer: I don't know, but it'd probably be crude
Anglo-Saxon single-syllable words in my English-centric conception. When I
first came up with this idea, I was not a fluently foul-mouthed person. I
eventually got through that, and learned when to do it. Sometimes I curse
well, but not when communicating online, in which I've developed a strong
tradition of formality even if IRC tests my ability to deal with trolling!
On 17.04.2012 00:58, Brian Rice wrote:
>
>> I first formalized this approach in 1993 after a number of discarded
>> attempts at solving/generalizing the problem of discourse enhancement, and
>> then set it aside for years while engaging in self-study of various
>> textbooks including the efforts corralled by Stanford. This language has
>> not had a name. I have in the past used the LOZENGE Unicode symbol ◊ for
>> its association with modal logic to indicate quantification of
>> possibility,
>> but could certainly use better suggestions.
>>
>> I'll clarify by this symbol that I mean it to be a kind of operator on a
>> language, so that the pidgin dialect of English and ◊ might be named
>> "English◊" or "English◊PoliSci" and not be equivalent to say "Turkish◊" or
>> "Arabic◊PoliSci"; the effects of pidginization would depend upon the
>> target
>> or culture who adopted it.
>>
>> I intend to publish online documentation (at a website, with a blog and
>> discussion forum of some type that I feel like supporting) and tools to
>> support this idea, and am looking for feedback to help *fix* and *refine*
>> the
>>
>> idea into some kind of viability, no matter how modest. I think the
>> description above is the best draft so far of a manifesto for it.
>>
>>
> --
> Тоłе МаьіЛеƒіљ МаьіПаніљ
>
> Δебјані ҩнІљте Ьлеј
> http://illte.conlang.org/ http://delang.conlang.org/
> ___
> «Панемі ƒłе δеьлеј ҩнδеьомеłс» - анƕомі
>
--
-Brian T. Rice
Messages in this topic (10)
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2h. Re: Introduction w/conlang
Posted by: "Тоłе МаьіЛеƒіљ" [email protected]
Date: Mon Apr 16, 2012 4:54 pm ((PDT))
On 17.04.2012 01:34, Brian Rice wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 16, 2012 at 4:27 PM, Тоłе МаьіЛеƒіљ МаьіПаніљ<
> [email protected]> wrote:
>
>> By Weloneqi, how do you curse in your language? And would it be possible
>> to curse so well that the listener would see the aura of Weloneqi's home
>> appear around your head?
>
> Nice. :-) Short answer: I don't know, but it'd probably be crude
> Anglo-Saxon single-syllable words in my English-centric conception. When I
> first came up with this idea, I was not a fluently foul-mouthed person. I
> eventually got through that, and learned when to do it. Sometimes I curse
> well, but not when communicating online, in which I've developed a strong
> tradition of formality even if IRC tests my ability to deal with trolling!
>
Might I suggest making foul-language a part of the grammar of the language?
It wouldn't be the first time some conlang has cursing as a part of the
grammar. Delang has the possibility to abuse the language hard-wired
into the grammar, although not every word can be used as a curse. Fамін,
The Girl, can hardly be taken as foul by anyone, while Малін, The Slide,
are a more natural curse, and let's not even consider adding the
locative ѡе-, into, to either of those two.
ѠАна! Ај Ѡелҩнеьі, ас ьѡасаьі! Смеłті.
--
Тоłе МаьіЛеƒіљ МаьіПаніљ
Δебјані ҩнІљте Ьлеј
http://illte.conlang.org/ http://delang.conlang.org/
___
«Панемі ƒłе δеьлеј ҩнδеьомеłс» - анƕомі
Messages in this topic (10)
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2i. Re: Introduction w/conlang
Posted by: "MorphemeAddict" [email protected]
Date: Mon Apr 16, 2012 11:00 pm ((PDT))
On Mon, Apr 16, 2012 at 7:23 PM, Logan Kearsley <[email protected]>wrote:
> On 16 April 2012 16:58, Brian Rice <[email protected]> wrote:
> > I am mostly known
> > online for some programming language designs (and know more programming
> > language ideas than the 99th percentile of the programming community),
> but
> > I do not feel that they adequately describe the scope of my intent, even
> if
> > they inform it.
>
> Hm. I may have to google you now, as I've recently caught the language
> design and implementation bug myself.
>
> > My overall goal: To create a language *toolset* for enhancing existing
> > rhetoric (see also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetoric) and
> > re-framing existing discourse and dialog.
>
> To summarize what I think this means from the rest of your
> explanation- you're trying to come up with a set of operators to apply
> to existing natural languages that will result in a derived language /
> dialect / register / whatever with particular properties of your
> design?
>
> > My hidden/long-standing assumptions (feel free to challenge or add to
> this,
> > to assist my learning/improvement on it): that a higher degree/palette of
> > inflections enables the kind of nuance that avoids misunderstanding or
> > allows one to correct or identify assumptions that others hold.
>
> I suspect you will run into what I think of as "the Laadan problem":
> given access to more explicit nuance, people will use it differently
> than intended, because sometimes people want ambiguity. They will lie
> with it, or, more generously, metaphorically extend it so it's just as
> ambiguous as whatever you started out with, and that will ruin things
> for everyone who's trying to use it rigorously because their listeners
> will not be able to assume the rigorous interpretation.
>
> How do natural languages deal with this problem?
stevo
> -l.
>
Messages in this topic (10)
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2j. Re: Introduction w/conlang
Posted by: "Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets" [email protected]
Date: Tue Apr 17, 2012 2:47 am ((PDT))
On 17 April 2012 08:00, MorphemeAddict <[email protected]> wrote:
> >
> > How do natural languages deal with this problem?
>
>
They don't. At most, people rely on context and non-verbal cues. In any
case, it's one of the motors of semantic drift (the extended meaning
becomes the core meaning if the original core meaning, for some reason,
stops being used), and one of the reasons why there is always a measure of
ambiguity in a statement without context.
--
Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets.
http://christophoronomicon.blogspot.com/
http://www.christophoronomicon.nl/
Messages in this topic (10)
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3a. Re: Destroying the noun/verb distinction
Posted by: "Iuhan Culmærija" [email protected]
Date: Tue Apr 17, 2012 12:21 am ((PDT))
This is really interesting. I am by no means one of the more informed
conlangers, but I have some ideas and comments.
For example, it would not keep "to eat" as a verb from its
> proto-Language, but it keeps the forms "eating (gerund)" and "eater." It
> uses these two to create a perfect/imperfect (perhaps, still working on it)
> distinction, and a distinction in main clauses and subordinate clauses.
The perfect/imperfect distinction reminds me of Semitic - and I will
coincidentally be using Hebrew/Aramaic as my analysis examples.
> To take the example sentence "he eats the apple," and show off the glosses
> used in them, the perfect in a main clause and imperfect in a subordinate
> clause would look like "he-nominative eater-role/apposition.to.nominative
> apple-genitive"
Aramaic uses the construct state to mean "there is a relationship between
these nouns." A derived system could use:
He-nominative eater-construct apple-dative
> and imperfect in main clauses would look something like "he-genitive
> eating-instrument apple-dative."
>
I am leaving the word order, morphology, phonology, and the like out of
> this discussion because I want to know how plausible this grammar is.
>
>
I think it is plausible - my only question is: if this system did exist,
wouldn't the "eater" and "eating" forms just be interpreted as verbs?
Both verbs and nouns are derived from the same root in Semitic. For
example, in Hebrew, "Katab" is 'wrote [3P m]' and "koteb" is 'writer.' But
I imagine one could just as easily interpret "katab" as the past tense
inflection of the adpositional noun 'writer.'
For clarity's sake, what I mean is that there can be two valid
interpretations of "He katab letter"
1. He wrote letter
2. He writer[role/adposition to nom.] letter
Was it Shakespeare who said that "an inflected-adpositional-noun by any
other name would still smell as verb"
- Iuhan
Messages in this topic (2)
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