There are 15 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1.1. Re: infinite sentences (was: Word Limit)
From: Nikolay Ivankov
1.2. Re: infinite sentences (was: Word Limit)
From: Daniel Burgener
1.3. Re: infinite sentences (was: Word Limit)
From: Gary Shannon
1.4. Re: infinite sentences (was: Word Limit)
From: Nikolay Ivankov
2a. Loglan VS Natlang
From: Mathieu Roy
2b. Re: Loglan VS Natlang
From: Patrick Dunn
2c. Re: Loglan VS Natlang
From: Logan Kearsley
2d. Re: Loglan VS Natlang
From: Matthew Martin
3a. Re: Verbal affixes: TAM & Person
From: Adam Walker
3b. Re: Verbal affixes: TAM & Person
From: Wm Annis
3c. Re: Verbal affixes: TAM & Person
From: Wm Annis
3d. Re: Verbal affixes: TAM & Person
From: Adam Walker
4a. Re: relative tense
From: Leonardo Castro
4b. Re: relative tense
From: Melroch
5.1. Re: Word Limit
From: Matthew Martin
Messages
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1.1. Re: infinite sentences (was: Word Limit)
Posted by: "Nikolay Ivankov" [email protected]
Date: Thu Jan 17, 2013 11:57 am ((PST))
On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 8:54 PM, Gary Shannon <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 9:50 AM, Daniel Burgener
> <[email protected]> wrote:
> >
> > [---snip---]
> >
> > First off, I'm defining a sentence in English as some combination of
> > English words fulfilling some set of syntax rules. Whether the rules
> > prohibit infinitely long sentences or not is a question for linguists,
> and
> > I am not one.
>
> [---snip---]
>
> I'm not a linguist either, but it seems to me that part of the
> definition of a sentence is that it COMPLETES a thought. Isn't it a
> requirement, then, that the sentence have an end? And aren't infinite
> sentences forbidden by the rules of grammar? Is it "a sentence" before
> it has a full stop? Once it has a full stop, can it be infinite?
>
> Yes, you can use some generative rules to keep the process going as
> long as you like, but, UNTIL YOU STOP, you don't have a "sentence",
> and once you stop, you don't have an infinite sentence. Until you stop
> you have a work in progress, a partial sentence in the process of
> being built, but not a complete sentence. And the rules of grammar
> require a sentence to be complete, and therefore finite, or it can't
> be called a sentence.
>
> The devil's advocate, of course, can say "start with the full stop on
> the right and build the sentence leftward to infinity. Then it has an
> end, but no beginning, and is still infinite." But that doesn't work
> either, because to be a sentence you must be able, at least in
> principle, to speak it (or read it), and to speak it you must BEGIN
> to speak it. And to begin to speak it, you must locate its beginning.
> Thus it must have a beginning AND an end.
>
> Speaking as an engineer, not as a mathematician, I would propose that
> a practical upper limit on sentence length should be a sentence than
> can be read and understood in a single 12-hour sitting. And don't
> forget that a sentence that takes 6 hours to read will probably take
> AT LEAST six MORE hours to disentangle and understand. At least!
>
I think Fidel Castro won't agree with your limit.
More likely, a 3-hour sentence will take 9 hours to parse and
> understand, so I'm tempted to say if the sentence cannot be read in 3
> hours then it's not a useable English sentence. Given the average
> adult (English) reading speed of 250 words per minute, 250 * 60 * 3 =
> 45,000 words. So the upper limit on a useable English sentence would
> be 45,000 words. (Moby Dick in 5 sentences; Atlas Shrugged in 13
> sentences; Fahrenheit 451 in slighty over one sentence)
>
> That's an _upper_ limit on the practical limit, not the actual
> practical limit, which is, I'm sure, considerably shorter.
>
> --gary
>
Messages in this topic (35)
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1.2. Re: infinite sentences (was: Word Limit)
Posted by: "Daniel Burgener" [email protected]
Date: Thu Jan 17, 2013 12:40 pm ((PST))
On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 2:54 PM, Gary Shannon <[email protected]> wrote:
> [snip]
>
> I'm not a linguist either, but it seems to me that part of the
> definition of a sentence is that it COMPLETES a thought. Isn't it a
> requirement, then, that the sentence have an end? And aren't infinite
> sentences forbidden by the rules of grammar? Is it "a sentence" before
> it has a full stop? Once it has a full stop, can it be infinite?
>
Since when does a sentence need to communicate a thought? Again, I have no
linguistics training, but isn't the famous sentence "colorless green ideas
sleep furiously" still technically a "sentence"?
I would really call this whole discussion a question of definition, and
linguists should (and I assume have?) define "sentence" for themselves.
Personally I would define it in terms of grammar. Something like:
S = NP + VP
NP = (M +) N (+ embedding word + S)
etc
Unless one added a specific rule banning infinite sentences, allowing
recursion allows infinite sentences if a sentence is defined in terms of a
recursive grammar.
[snip]
Speaking as an engineer, not as a mathematician, I would propose that
> a practical upper limit on sentence length should be a sentence than
> can be read and understood in a single 12-hour sitting. And don't
> forget that a sentence that takes 6 hours to read will probably take
> AT LEAST six MORE hours to disentangle and understand. At least!
>
Why not just require that they be finite? It's certainly more elegant, and
doesn't require dealing with "but it should be 11 hours! 12 is much too
long!"
-Daniel
Messages in this topic (35)
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1.3. Re: infinite sentences (was: Word Limit)
Posted by: "Gary Shannon" [email protected]
Date: Thu Jan 17, 2013 1:03 pm ((PST))
On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 12:40 PM, Daniel Burgener
<[email protected]> wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 2:54 PM, Gary Shannon <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> [snip]
>>
>> I'm not a linguist either, but it seems to me that part of the
>> definition of a sentence is that it COMPLETES a thought. Isn't it a
>> requirement, then, that the sentence have an end? And aren't infinite
>> sentences forbidden by the rules of grammar? Is it "a sentence" before
>> it has a full stop? Once it has a full stop, can it be infinite?
>>
>
> Since when does a sentence need to communicate a thought? Again, I have no
> linguistics training, but isn't the famous sentence "colorless green ideas
> sleep furiously" still technically a "sentence"?
My personal, pragmatic and idiosyncratic definition of "sentence"
would lead me to say that "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously." is
a "sentence-like string, the same way that "4 + 7 = 275" is an
equation-like string.
Granted, Chomsky was illustrating HIS definition of a sentence as
being a string of words that obeys some set of syntactic production
rules. But that's a very superficial way of looking at the concept of
"sentence." Even Chomsky pointed out that semantically the sentence
was meaningless. I have a hard time thinking of meaningless strings as
"sentences".
In the domain of syntax, "Colorless green..." is a sentence. But
language users are not consciously concerned with syntax. They are
concerned with meaning. And so, in the domain of _language_,
"Colorless green..." is not a sentence.
I prefer the deep structure meaning of "sentence" to the surface
structure meaning. ;-)
--gary
Messages in this topic (35)
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1.4. Re: infinite sentences (was: Word Limit)
Posted by: "Nikolay Ivankov" [email protected]
Date: Thu Jan 17, 2013 1:25 pm ((PST))
On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 10:03 PM, Gary Shannon <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 12:40 PM, Daniel Burgener
> <[email protected]> wrote:
> > On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 2:54 PM, Gary Shannon <[email protected]> wrote:
> >
> >> [snip]
> >>
> >> I'm not a linguist either, but it seems to me that part of the
> >> definition of a sentence is that it COMPLETES a thought. Isn't it a
> >> requirement, then, that the sentence have an end? And aren't infinite
> >> sentences forbidden by the rules of grammar? Is it "a sentence" before
> >> it has a full stop? Once it has a full stop, can it be infinite?
> >>
> >
> > Since when does a sentence need to communicate a thought? Again, I have
> no
> > linguistics training, but isn't the famous sentence "colorless green
> ideas
> > sleep furiously" still technically a "sentence"?
>
> My personal, pragmatic and idiosyncratic definition of "sentence"
> would lead me to say that "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously." is
> a "sentence-like string, the same way that "4 + 7 = 275" is an
> equation-like string.
>
> Granted, Chomsky was illustrating HIS definition of a sentence as
> being a string of words that obeys some set of syntactic production
> rules. But that's a very superficial way of looking at the concept of
> "sentence." Even Chomsky pointed out that semantically the sentence
> was meaningless. I have a hard time thinking of meaningless strings as
> "sentences".
>
> In the domain of syntax, "Colorless green..." is a sentence. But
> language users are not consciously concerned with syntax. They are
> concerned with meaning. And so, in the domain of _language_,
> "Colorless green..." is not a sentence.
>
> I prefer the deep structure meaning of "sentence" to the surface
> structure meaning. ;-)
>
> --gary
>
But why not take it as a sentence of some particular. Granted, it does not
have any semantic meaning for us, but by other people in some other context
it well may do. The same for 4+7=275. The only thing You presume that all
the values are what you think them to be, and not that you have some exotic
code.In fact what you can do is assign some kind of measure of the
meaningfullness for each phrase, which you may also consider as a function
depending on, say, a point in space-time, or on the set of people. And for
the people it may also be a random variable that also depends on their age.
Also, you may assign weights to the people by their mastering of English,
so that the weight for non-English speakers would be close to 0. And so on
and so forth.
Messages in this topic (35)
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2a. Loglan VS Natlang
Posted by: "Mathieu Roy" [email protected]
Date: Thu Jan 17, 2013 1:38 pm ((PST))
Do you think it would be good that everyone be able to speak a loglan? I
have been arguing all night on this. Personally I think it would be good.
If you want me to define what I mean by good, let me know, but for now I let
you define it has you want.
-Mat
Messages in this topic (4)
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2b. Re: Loglan VS Natlang
Posted by: "Patrick Dunn" [email protected]
Date: Thu Jan 17, 2013 1:43 pm ((PST))
On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 3:38 PM, Mathieu Roy <[email protected]>wrote:
> Do you think it would be good that everyone be able to speak a loglan? I
> have been arguing all night on this. Personally I think it would be good.
>
> If you want me to define what I mean by good, let me know, but for now I
> let
> you define it has you want.
>
> -Mat
>
No.
--
Second Person, a chapbook of poetry by Patrick Dunn, is now available for
order from Finishing Line
Press<http://www.finishinglinepress.com/NewReleasesandForthcomingTitles.htm>
and
Amazon<http://www.amazon.com/Second-Person-Patrick-Dunn/dp/1599249065/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1324342341&sr=8-2>.
Messages in this topic (4)
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2c. Re: Loglan VS Natlang
Posted by: "Logan Kearsley" [email protected]
Date: Thu Jan 17, 2013 1:47 pm ((PST))
On 17 January 2013 14:38, Mathieu Roy <[email protected]> wrote:
> Do you think it would be good that everyone be able to speak a loglan? I
> have been arguing all night on this. Personally I think it would be good.
>
> If you want me to define what I mean by good, let me know, but for now I let
> you define it has you want.
I think it would be a good world to live in if everyone were capable
of speaking a loglang, because that implies something about the
cognitive capacities of humans that I would like to be true. However,
I don't think that carries any implication that everybody *should*
speak a loglang.
-l.
Messages in this topic (4)
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2d. Re: Loglan VS Natlang
Posted by: "Matthew Martin" [email protected]
Date: Thu Jan 17, 2013 3:21 pm ((PST))
There exists a people who should all speak a loglan and that is the Vulcans. I
discussed this elsewhere and those who know more about Star Trek than seem to
be saying that there is too much already written about Vulcans and their space
elvish language, but I think real world Vulcans would either convert their
natural language to a loglan or write one from scratch.
And that's all I'll say because we're too close to auxlang advocacy and that
would require switching to the other mailing list to continue the discussion.
>Do you think it would be good that everyone be able to speak a loglan? I
>have been arguing all night on this. Personally I think it would be good.
>If you want me to define what I mean by good, let me know, but for now I let
>you define it has you want.
>-Mat
Messages in this topic (4)
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3a. Re: Verbal affixes: TAM & Person
Posted by: "Adam Walker" [email protected]
Date: Thu Jan 17, 2013 1:55 pm ((PST))
I'm resurrecting this thread because I still haven't found any example of a
language that combines tense and mood in a single marker, while person and
aspect are combined in another. But what I have found is Natqgu where mood
is marked at -3 and "proclitic aspect" at -5, while "enclitic aspect" is
marked at +13 followed by a "temporal adverb" at +14 and subject and object
marking at +19 and +20 respectively (which I assume functions like person
marking only for object as well as subject like in Klingon, but separated
out into two affixes instead of one).
This seems to flatly contradict William's stated normal expectation "you
normally expect the aspect marker to be
closest to the verb, then tense, (then mood), then person marking." Here
mood is closest, then aspect, then tense(?) and finally person(?).
Actually it's only mood that is out of place now that I squint at it. How
firm are the tendencies William noted? How often are they violated?
Adam
On Fri, Dec 7, 2012 at 9:10 PM, Wm Annis <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 7, 2012 at 3:09 PM, Adam Walker <[email protected]> wrote:
> > In redesigning Gravgaln, I have been considering using a prefix (-1)
> > to show tense and mood and a second (-2) to show person and aspect.
> > This is an alien language, but still I'd like to know if there is
> > ANADEW for this divison of labor. Also if there is some Very Good
> > Reason(tm) not to do things this way, I'd like fair warning on that
> > too.
>
> In human languages, if you do have distinct, non-blended marking
> for tense and aspect, you normally expect the aspect marker to be
> closest to the verb, then tense, (then mood), then person marking.
>
> If one squints a bit, one could say that Navajo is developing a system
> a bit like yours. Centuries of exposure to IE languages seems to be
> inspiring the invention of past tense marking. But this is happening
> at the other end of the verb, with the prefix pile-up handling person
> marking and aspect (though the aspect is a result of both prefixes and
> stem choice).
>
> --
> wm
>
Messages in this topic (7)
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3b. Re: Verbal affixes: TAM & Person
Posted by: "Wm Annis" [email protected]
Date: Thu Jan 17, 2013 2:05 pm ((PST))
On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 3:55 PM, Adam Walker <[email protected]> wrote:
> This seems to flatly contradict William's stated normal expectation "you
> normally expect the aspect marker to be
> closest to the verb, then tense, (then mood), then person marking."
How can a statement of tendency be "flatly contradicted" by a single
counterexample? No one I've read on this topic is crazy enough to
make universal claims. :)
Here's a paper which discusses the matter, and includes references
to deeper studies on the topic:
http://www.ailla.utexas.org/site/cilla5/Kelly_CILLA_V.pdf
Baybee and Bauer are the works to hunt down.
--
wm,
who is going to make a giant "all typological statements are
*statistical*" signature for posting on CONLANG-L
Messages in this topic (7)
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3c. Re: Verbal affixes: TAM & Person
Posted by: "Wm Annis" [email protected]
Date: Thu Jan 17, 2013 2:06 pm ((PST))
Ooh, this is nifty, a survey of orders:
http://dspace-unive.cilea.it/bitstream/10278/1518/1/Cinque.TAM.MirrorP.pdf
--
wm
Messages in this topic (7)
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3d. Re: Verbal affixes: TAM & Person
Posted by: "Adam Walker" [email protected]
Date: Thu Jan 17, 2013 2:18 pm ((PST))
Sorry, I had my hyperbolizer in overdrive. That and when I started the
e-mail I had in my mind that several of the pieces were out of order, then
realized it was really just one.
Adam
On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 4:05 PM, Wm Annis <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 3:55 PM, Adam Walker <[email protected]> wrote:
> > This seems to flatly contradict William's stated normal expectation "you
> > normally expect the aspect marker to be
> > closest to the verb, then tense, (then mood), then person marking."
>
> How can a statement of tendency be "flatly contradicted" by a single
> counterexample? No one I've read on this topic is crazy enough to
> make universal claims. :)
>
> Here's a paper which discusses the matter, and includes references
> to deeper studies on the topic:
>
> http://www.ailla.utexas.org/site/cilla5/Kelly_CILLA_V.pdf
>
> Baybee and Bauer are the works to hunt down.
>
> --
> wm,
> who is going to make a giant "all typological statements are
> *statistical*" signature for posting on CONLANG-L
>
Messages in this topic (7)
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4a. Re: relative tense
Posted by: "Leonardo Castro" [email protected]
Date: Thu Jan 17, 2013 3:36 pm ((PST))
I'm considering creating three modifier particles to specify if a word refers ti
(1) the reality of the narrator;
(2) the reality of the story being told;
(3) the text itself (so that "later" would mean "in a more advanced
position of this text").
Até mais!
Leonardo
2013/1/17 Nikolay Ivankov <[email protected]>:
> Ok, here is the article:
>
> http://ia600200.us.archive.org/17/items/rosettaproject_hop_morsyn-2/rosettaproject_hop_morsyn-2.pdf
>
> The subject is on the page 546, Relations. Due to this grammar, Hopi indeed
> has temporals like "yesterday", "tomorrow" and "when spring comes", but
> these ones are like relative time. I have to check it myself, since I have
> precisely this kind of time in my conlang.
>
>
> On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 12:28 AM, Njenfalgar <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> 2013/1/16 Nikolay Ivankov <[email protected]>
>>
>> > As already said, Hopi. Hopi is polysynthetic, with up to AFAIR 5 prefixes
>> > and up to 5 suffixes that you can attach to the root. Agian AFAIR the
>> first
>> > suffix in a clause shows relative time/aspect/something like that with
>> > respect to the previous clause, such as immediate following, preceding,
>> > cause, result and others, including, again AFAIR, gnomic. The grammar
>> > was available online on Rosetta Project about a decade ago, and I've been
>> > trying to TeXify then, but now I'm unable to find the files. But I'm
>> really
>> > thinking some you will definitely find it after some googling today.
>> >
>> > Best,
>> >
>> > Kolya
>> >
>>
>> That sounds like what I was thinking of indeed. The Google-ing I did today
>> lead mostly to the Hopi time controversy, which is about the question of
>> whether Hopi has nouns describing absolute time. My language does have
>> those. :-)
>>
>> --
>> Dos ony tãsnonnop, koták ony tãsnonnop.
>>
>> http://njenfalgar.conlang.org/
>>
Messages in this topic (10)
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4b. Re: relative tense
Posted by: "Melroch" [email protected]
Date: Thu Jan 17, 2013 3:47 pm ((PST))
In Swedish can say e.g. "Jag har gått när du kommer imorgon" lit. 'I have
gone when you come tomorrow'. It's an effect of the fact that you can use
the present tense with future meaning without any extra marking, a
remainder of the Old Germanic past vs. non-past tense system. If you use
one of the explicit future marking constructions like _kommer att_ +
infinitive you must use it on both verbs however. You can't say things
like **"Jag gick när du kommer" with one verb in the preterite and one in
the present tense.
AFMOC Sohlob has aspect (habitual, perfect and progressive) but no tense.
It also has an irrealis mode which must normally be used when talking about
the future but also in other situations. I still have to stay and think
when expressing myself in that system.
/bpj
Den torsdagen den 17:e januari 2013 skrev Njenfalgar:
> 2013/1/16 Nikolay Ivankov <[email protected] <javascript:;>>
>
> > As already said, Hopi. Hopi is polysynthetic, with up to AFAIR 5 prefixes
> > and up to 5 suffixes that you can attach to the root. Agian AFAIR the
> first
> > suffix in a clause shows relative time/aspect/something like that with
> > respect to the previous clause, such as immediate following, preceding,
> > cause, result and others, including, again AFAIR, gnomic. The grammar
> > was available online on Rosetta Project about a decade ago, and I've been
> > trying to TeXify then, but now I'm unable to find the files. But I'm
> really
> > thinking some you will definitely find it after some googling today.
> >
> > Best,
> >
> > Kolya
> >
>
> That sounds like what I was thinking of indeed. The Google-ing I did today
> lead mostly to the Hopi time controversy, which is about the question of
> whether Hopi has nouns describing absolute time. My language does have
> those. :-)
>
> --
> Dos ony tãsnonnop, koták ony tãsnonnop.
>
> http://njenfalgar.conlang.org/
>
Messages in this topic (10)
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5.1. Re: Word Limit
Posted by: "Matthew Martin" [email protected]
Date: Thu Jan 17, 2013 3:49 pm ((PST))
>Is there a limit on how many words can be in a conlang?
I'll approach this from the the angle of fandom and designing a productive
derivational morphology.
At 100 words, you have enough to communicate a lot more than you might expect
and casual fans might invest the time to learn 100 words just for the heck of
it.
At 3,000 to 7,000 you are about the the range of a 2nd language learner who
finally can read the paper and light fiction-- fans would have to be as
motivated to learn that many words as they are motivated to learn a foreign
language. And that generally has to be pretty darn motivated.
At 50,000 to 75,000 words you are approaching the vocab of highly educated
scholars. No one is going to learn this many words and fewer would find it
entertaining to read through a dictionary that big.
Do you have in mind making the set of content words closed? (A fixed number
nouns, adjectives, verbs, etc) This imho, makes for an interesting language
because it puts the conlang creator and the fans on equal footing. Take
Dothraki for an example, as far as I can tell, the content words form an open
class-- so the creator can create a new word for "telephone" and it would be a
nice tidy, short word. Fans can only use fan coined word, circumlocutions,
possibly long derivations and maybe loan words from English, which fan
communities generally don't like. When the set of words is closed, then the
path is clear: derivational morphology or phrases and everyone has the
materials ready to do that and the result would be on par with what the
language inventor might come up with. It takes the endless waiting out of the
game of being a conlang fan, it takes away semantic areas that are almost taboo
like because of the lack of a transparent compound word or of a related root
word.
Okay- every language designer has the choice of being analytic (where you have
word count in your lexicon) or more synthetic, where the number of distinct
morphemes because more interesting. And even if you are analytic, like
chinese, you still have a lot of compounding going on. So there might be an
optimal number of morphemes that you need to build words. So if I have two
roots, two prefixes and six suffixes that can combine to make new content
words, then I have 2 * 2* 6 possible words (*2 if compounding is allowed and *
infinity if compounds can compound). It doesn't take much for these numbers
to become huge, the upper bound of the number of words you can derive becomes a
problem if your language is very small.
Another point to keep in mind is that if you have a large number of possible
derivations, the more likely that someone will be able to create a semantically
transparent compound or derived word. The the number of possible derivations
is in the trillions, then the odds of a fan (or yourself) being able to create
a new, transparent word from existing material gets pretty good-- by my super
scientific proof that the odds of anything approaches 1 as you increase the
opportunities for it to happen.
Last thing about closed content lexicons-- In an open lexicon "telephone" means
just that and you assume that there is a different word for cell phone. In a
closed lexicon language, it is much easier for fans to agree telephone means
that plus everything similar to a telephone, including possibly handwritten
letters (should there not be a better phrase or word for it) In Klingon people
use phasers and it feels like it should only mean phasers--- Marc Okrand has a
word for potato gun-I'm sure of it, he just hasn't announced it. So it will
feel odd to use these super specific words as general category words.
Matthew Martin
Messages in this topic (35)
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