There are 15 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. An ambiguous sentence
From: Roger Mills
1b. Re: An ambiguous sentence
From: Patrick Dunn
2a. Re: THEORY: Practical limit of inflection complexity?
From: Patrick Dunn
3a. Re: Is there a word for this?
From: Garth Wallace
3b. Re: Is there a word for this?
From: Gary Shannon
3c. Re: Is there a word for this?
From: Garth Wallace
4a. Re: logical language VS not-so-logical language (was RE: Loglan[g] V
From: BPJ
4b. Re: logical language VS not-so-logical language (was RE: Loglan[g] V
From: Padraic Brown
4c. Re: logical language VS not-so-logical language (was RE: Loglan[g] V
From: Jörg Rhiemeier
4d. Re: logical language VS not-so-logical language (was RE: Loglan[g] V
From: Patrick Dunn
5a. Re: Loglan[g] VS Natlang
From: Patrick Dunn
5b. Re: Loglan[g] VS Natlang
From: Mathieu Roy
5c. Re: Loglan[g] VS Natlang
From: ÐеÑÑ ÐлаÑк
6.1. Re: infinite sentences (was: Word Limit)
From: Nikolay Ivankov
7.1. Re: Word Limit
From: David Peterson
Messages
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1a. An ambiguous sentence
Posted by: "Roger Mills" [email protected]
Date: Fri Jan 18, 2013 11:17 am ((PST))
Here's just about my favorite-- my major professor always threw it out to his
Ling.101 students:
The police were ordered to stop drinking on campus after midnight.
Messages in this topic (2)
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1b. Re: An ambiguous sentence
Posted by: "Patrick Dunn" [email protected]
Date: Fri Jan 18, 2013 11:21 am ((PST))
Aaaaand . . . stolen.
Pedagogy is theft, after all.
On Fri, Jan 18, 2013 at 1:16 PM, Roger Mills <[email protected]> wrote:
> Here's just about my favorite-- my major professor always threw it out to
> his Ling.101 students:
>
> The police were ordered to stop drinking on campus after midnight.
>
--
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 (2)
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2a. Re: THEORY: Practical limit of inflection complexity?
Posted by: "Patrick Dunn" [email protected]
Date: Fri Jan 18, 2013 11:20 am ((PST))
That's a really good question. I'm not sure how one would begin to answer
it in any sort of analytic way, but when you consider things like Ancient
Greek or Sanskrit, which have frankly *InSANE* amounts of inflection that
people actually seemed to use (judging, at least, from the writing -- the
spoken language may have been less complex in practice), it seems like a
pretty large range of permissible inflection. And, it seems to me, with no
evidence whatsoever but a hunch, that the more agglutinating rather than
inflecting a language is, the more such things it might support.
(An ancient Greek verb is potentially conjugated for three persons, three
numbers, one present tense, two past tenses, one future tense, the perfect
aspect, three voices [active, passive, middle], three moods [indicative,
optative, subjunctive] and a full range of participles, infinitives, and
imperatives in most of these tenses, aspects, and voices . . . and so on.)
On Fri, Jan 18, 2013 at 9:37 AM, Leonardo Castro <[email protected]>wrote:
> I have noticed that many languages have some inflections that are not
> really used in everyday speech, being substituted with others (what
> reduces the total number of inflection) or with more analytical
> structures.
>
> Do you think there is a limit of the number of word inflection people
> on the streets can deal with?
>
> Até mais!
>
> Leonardo
>
--
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 (3)
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3a. Re: Is there a word for this?
Posted by: "Garth Wallace" [email protected]
Date: Fri Jan 18, 2013 11:23 am ((PST))
On Fri, Jan 18, 2013 at 11:04 AM, Gary Shannon <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 18, 2013 at 10:11 AM, Patrick Dunn <[email protected]> wrote:
>> Determiner
>>
>
> Nope. Consider the template: The box fell ____.
>
> Which set is isotactic to that template?
>
> Maybe: { over down slowly quickly immediately suddenly ... }
>
> When you say "determiner" you have named one SPECIFIC isotactic set.
> Clearly the above isotactic set is more like "adverb" than
> "determiner", yet "adverb" doesn't map the same semantic space I'm
> seeking to map with this template.
>
> And what about the template: The box ____ down.
>
> That isotactic set might include: { falls fell tumbled crashed broke
> was ...} Also not "determiner", or "adverb" either. Nor is it "verb"
> because "The box spoke down." doesn't work, so the verb "spoke" is not
> in that particular isotactic set.
Why not? On its own it doesn't make a lot of sense, but in the right
context it could be meaningful. For example, in a fantasy story where
the box is anthopomorphised.
> That's why I'm not looking for words like "verb", "noun",
> "determiner", ... I'm looking for a term that applies to ALL isotaxis,
> or to the concept of isotaxis in general.
"Part of speech". Or "word class", or "lexical category", etc. At
least if I'm understanding you correctly.
Messages in this topic (7)
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3b. Re: Is there a word for this?
Posted by: "Gary Shannon" [email protected]
Date: Fri Jan 18, 2013 12:18 pm ((PST))
On Fri, Jan 18, 2013 at 11:23 AM, Garth Wallace <[email protected]> wrote:
---snip---
>
> "Part of speech". Or "word class", or "lexical category", etc. At
> least if I'm understanding you correctly.
I'm referring more to the method of collecting sets. Besides, each of
those terms is already loaded down with specific meanings, so if I use
them to describe something different there will be no end of
confusion.
And apparently I'm not doing too good a job of getting my idea across.
Things like "part of speech" are similar, but the criteria for placing
a word in one part of speech or another is different. If I said that a
possessive pronoun and a definite article were the same part of speech
people would think I was incredibly stupid. But I CAN say that with
respect a particular specified template possessive pronouns and
definite articles CAN BE isotactic. So "part of speech" doesn't cut
it.
Also, I'm interested in sets of words that are BOTH grammatically AND
semantically _sensible_ in the specified context. "Part of speech" and
"word class" don't cut it, because a given word which has a single
"part of speech" in English could well belong to many different
isotactic sets. And that's also not how "part of speech" works.
================================================
On Fri, Jan 18, 2013 at 11:10 AM, René Uittenbogaard <[email protected]> wrote:
> selma'o?
>
> http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/selma%27o
>
> René
>
Yes, that's close. I don't like that word, though. ;-)
--gary
Messages in this topic (7)
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3c. Re: Is there a word for this?
Posted by: "Garth Wallace" [email protected]
Date: Fri Jan 18, 2013 2:23 pm ((PST))
On Fri, Jan 18, 2013 at 12:15 PM, Gary Shannon <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 18, 2013 at 11:23 AM, Garth Wallace <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> ---snip---
>>
>> "Part of speech". Or "word class", or "lexical category", etc. At
>> least if I'm understanding you correctly.
>
> I'm referring more to the method of collecting sets. Besides, each of
> those terms is already loaded down with specific meanings, so if I use
> them to describe something different there will be no end of
> confusion.
>
> And apparently I'm not doing too good a job of getting my idea across.
> Things like "part of speech" are similar, but the criteria for placing
> a word in one part of speech or another is different. If I said that a
> possessive pronoun and a definite article were the same part of speech
> people would think I was incredibly stupid.
But you can say that they're both specifiers and be entirely correct.
If you treat classes as a flat, mutually exclusive categorization
scheme, of course it doesn't work. But I don't think there's any
reason to do so. Langauges have all sorts of subclasses that restrict
the possible syntactic contexts they can appear in beyond those of the
larger categories, or allow exceptional syntactic contexts:
intrasitive vs. transitive verbs, verbs requiring certain oblique
arguments, verbs requirinf "quirky subjects", deponents, mass vs.
count nouns, pluralia tantum, prepositions with different valency (if
you accept that theory), and so on. You can even allow for some
overlap, for example the "specifier" class in English contains
articles, demonstratives, and possessive NPs.
> But I CAN say that with
> respect a particular specified template possessive pronouns and
> definite articles CAN BE isotactic. So "part of speech" doesn't cut
> it.
>
> Also, I'm interested in sets of words that are BOTH grammatically AND
> semantically _sensible_ in the specified context.
"Semantically sensible" is pretty nebulous. It can depend on any
number of other words in the sentence, and even on information outside
of the sentence. Even the audience is part of the context. I'm not
sure that, even given all of that, you could always strictly say that
a word is or is not semantically sensible (possibly more or less
semantically sensible). It'd be tough to come up with useful
generalizations if that's a criterion.
Messages in this topic (7)
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4a. Re: logical language VS not-so-logical language (was RE: Loglan[g] V
Posted by: "BPJ" [email protected]
Date: Fri Jan 18, 2013 11:28 am ((PST))
On 2013-01-18 19:57, Mathieu Roy wrote:
> I don't know if the following is true, but my French teacher told me that
> monks in the past were paid by letters and therefore were adding letters to
> some words. That would explain why a lot of words have for example the
> letters "eau" pronounces as "o" (bateau, eau, beau, chateau, etc.) or simply
> "au" pronounces as "o" (faux, taux, etc.) or silent letter at the end (faux,
> taux, etc.) or double letters that are indistinguishable from one letter
> (balle, sale, association, etc.)
It *is* true that they added letters here and there,
but for the most part 'illogical' spellings in French
reflect how the words were actually pronounced in the
thirteent century. Some were meant to approximate the
spelling to their Latin counterpart, sometimes mistakenly.
/bpj
Messages in this topic (5)
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4b. Re: logical language VS not-so-logical language (was RE: Loglan[g] V
Posted by: "Padraic Brown" [email protected]
Date: Fri Jan 18, 2013 12:52 pm ((PST))
--- On Fri, 1/18/13, Mathieu Roy <[email protected]> wrote:
> > Yep. The loglangs I have seen look very bland and technical; natlangs
> > and naturalistic artlangs are far richer than those. Speaking a
> > loglang is live living in an apartment without wallpaper, lit by
> > naked light bulbs, and with furniture made of unpolished and unpainted
> > pieces of wood coarsely nailed together. It works, but there is no
> > *fun* to it.
>
> I'm not saying we should remove the paint and the wallpaper, I'm just
> saying we should repair the plumbing and the holes in the wall.
Perhaps there really isn't anything wrong with the plumbing after all...
With all due respect, it's not my intention to get into a dreadful
loglang v. natlang discussion. I said before I am no fan of loglangs or
constructed auxlangs. I agree with the above: bland and technical.
Asceptic even. Certainly no fun or mystery there! I think that no loglang
does any better what a natlang can already do; and can't do some of what a
natlang does by nature. So, I don't see much point in them.
Perhaps at this point you might consider taking this to Auxlang or some
sort of loglang analog? I deleted a whole lot of your post, which might be
better off over that way, since it really is more about loglang supremacy
at the worst or advocacy at the very least.
> FINAL THOUGHT: If there were no natural languages, how would you create
> one and why?
If there were no natural languages, we wouldn't be able to create one,
because we'd have no concept of language with which to create. We wouldn't
even be talking about creating one, because we'd be simple, non-speaking
languageless apes living in the forests of Africa somewhere.
Final thought: I'm just going to reiterate my totally nonlogical assertion:
no, it would not be a good thing for everyone to speak a loglang. It ain't
broke, so why try to fix it? And leave the discussion at that.
Padraic
Messages in this topic (5)
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4c. Re: logical language VS not-so-logical language (was RE: Loglan[g] V
Posted by: "Jörg Rhiemeier" [email protected]
Date: Fri Jan 18, 2013 1:04 pm ((PST))
Hallo conlangers!
On Friday 18 January 2013 21:51:42 Padraic Brown wrote:
> --- On Fri, 1/18/13, Mathieu Roy <[email protected]> wrote:
> > > Yep. The loglangs I have seen look very bland and technical; natlangs
> > > and naturalistic artlangs are far richer than those. Speaking a
> > > loglang is live living in an apartment without wallpaper, lit by
> > > naked light bulbs, and with furniture made of unpolished and unpainted
> > > pieces of wood coarsely nailed together. It works, but there is no
> > > *fun* to it.
> >
> > I'm not saying we should remove the paint and the wallpaper, I'm just
> > saying we should repair the plumbing and the holes in the wall.
>
> Perhaps there really isn't anything wrong with the plumbing after all...
>
> With all due respect, it's not my intention to get into a dreadful
> loglang v. natlang discussion. I said before I am no fan of loglangs or
> constructed auxlangs.
Nor am I. I do not with to get into a loglang vs. natlang
discussion, and I am no fan of loglangs or constructed auxlangs,
either. Both try to fix what isn't broken.
> I agree with the above: bland and technical.
> Asceptic even. Certainly no fun or mystery there! I think that no loglang
> does any better what a natlang can already do; and can't do some of what a
> natlang does by nature. So, I don't see much point in them.
Don't get me wrong; the idea of a logical language has its merits,
it is certainly interesting to explore it. But what I have seen
so far looks so reduced to naked function that it drives the fun
out of it - hence my "apartment without wallpaper" analogy.
> Perhaps at this point you might consider taking this to Auxlang or some
> sort of loglang analog? I deleted a whole lot of your post, which might be
> better off over that way, since it really is more about loglang supremacy
> at the worst or advocacy at the very least.
Amen. AMEN.
This is loglang advocacy and does not belong here.
> > FINAL THOUGHT: If there were no natural languages, how would you create
> > one and why?
>
> If there were no natural languages, we wouldn't be able to create one,
> because we'd have no concept of language with which to create. We wouldn't
> even be talking about creating one, because we'd be simple, non-speaking
> languageless apes living in the forests of Africa somewhere.
WORD. We'd be apes, nothing else.
> Final thought: I'm just going to reiterate my totally nonlogical assertion:
> no, it would not be a good thing for everyone to speak a loglang. It ain't
> broke, so why try to fix it? And leave the discussion at that.
Yep.
> Padraic
--
... brought to you by the Weeping Elf
http://www.joerg-rhiemeier.de/Conlang/index.html
"Bêsel asa Éam, a Éam atha cvanthal a cvanth atha Éamal." - SiM 1:1
Messages in this topic (5)
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4d. Re: logical language VS not-so-logical language (was RE: Loglan[g] V
Posted by: "Patrick Dunn" [email protected]
Date: Fri Jan 18, 2013 1:37 pm ((PST))
On Fri, Jan 18, 2013 at 12:57 PM, Mathieu Roy <[email protected]>wrote:
>
>
> FINAL THOUGH: If there were no natural languages, how would you create one
> and why? Do you think it would look like our natural languages and why?
>
If we invented it it would by definition not be natural.
We forget, perhaps, as conlangers that language is at its root biological.
If there were no natural language, there could be no language at all,
because we wouldn't have the neural architecture to support it.
(Now, in point of fact, I happen to be a nonmaterialist, so I don't
entirely buy that argument, but it's what I think most linguists would
say. What *I* suspect is that our neural architecture exists *because*
language does, but that's nearly approaching mysticism, not science, so I
step away from it gently and the rest is silence.)
--
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 (5)
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5a. Re: Loglan[g] VS Natlang
Posted by: "Patrick Dunn" [email protected]
Date: Fri Jan 18, 2013 11:29 am ((PST))
On Fri, Jan 18, 2013 at 12:24 PM, Jörg Rhiemeier <[email protected]>wrote:
> Hallo conlangers!
>
> On Friday 18 January 2013 13:29:32 R A Brown wrote:
>
> > On 18/01/2013 11:27, Mathieu Roy wrote:
> > > What are the advantages of speaking a less logical
> > > language (a language with grammar rules with a lot of
> > > exceptions, a lot of words with ambiguity, etc.)?
> >
> > Being human? :)
>
> Yes. Which, of course, includes being capable of using metaphor
> and word play, which are off limits in a true logical language.
> Life is not an application of formal logic, and I have been
> feeling for a very long time that human language and formal logic
> serve *different* purposes. Language is not about mathematically
> proving or disproving assertions; it is about sharing ideas and
> emotions.
>
>
>
Yes, yes yes! I am no enemy of formal logic, but formal logic is not the
same thing as logic, or logical thought. It's one kind of way of
organizing symbols to arrive at truths about their relationships with each
other. But there are others, that lead to other kinds of truth, and
language is not just an imperfect version of formal logic. If anything,
formal logic is an imperfect version of language -- imperfect in
interesting and useful ways.
Moreover, I would sooner stick a fork in my own hand than to suggest that
anyone "should" learn any particular language -- although I will go so far
as to suggest that everyone who is going to regard themselves as educated
should make an effort to learn at least one other language (and, in my
fantasy university, every single student will learn two languages, one
living and one dead). But I'm not going to say "everyone must learn
Latin!" or "Everyone should learn English!" I won't even say that everyone
in America should learn English.
As far as I'm concerned, there is precious little room in linguistics, or
in conlanging, for shoulds.
Other than as modals.
(Hmm, although I will go so far as to suggest that anyone who wishes to
study in an American university should probably know enough English to
understand the lectures, and anyone who doesn't shouldn't be admitted to
that university unless the University is willing to provide translators.
So I guess that's my prescriptive line.)
--Patrick
Messages in this topic (10)
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5b. Re: Loglan[g] VS Natlang
Posted by: "Mathieu Roy" [email protected]
Date: Fri Jan 18, 2013 11:42 am ((PST))
<<Moreover, I would sooner stick a fork in my own hand than to suggest that
anyone "should" learn any particular language -- although I will go so far
as to suggest that everyone who is going to regard themselves as educated
should make an effort to learn at least one other language (and, in my
fantasy university, every single student will learn two languages, one
living and one dead). But I'm not going to say "everyone must learn
Latin!" or "Everyone should learn English!" I won't even say that everyone
in America should learn English.
As far as I'm concerned, there is precious little room in linguistics, or
in conlanging, for shoulds.
Other than as modals.>>
Sorry for my badly phrased sentence. I agree that people should learn a
language only if they want to (while on the other hand it kind of hurts to
stick a fork in one's own hand ;) ). That's why I reformulated my though in
a latter email asking for advantages of less logical languages because
that's what I really wanted to know in the end. So I apologize.
<<(Hmm, although I will go so far as to suggest that anyone who wishes to
study in an American university should probably know enough English to
understand the lectures, and anyone who doesn't shouldn't be admitted to
that university unless the University is willing to provide translators.
So I guess that's my prescriptive line.)>>
I am American too, and there are plenty people that do not speak English in
my university. Yes people from Quebec, Mexico, and South America are also
Americans; what they are not is US-Americans. I would sooner stick a fork in
my own hand than to suggest that my country is America.
Messages in this topic (10)
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5c. Re: Loglan[g] VS Natlang
Posted by: "ÐеÑÑ ÐлаÑк" [email protected]
Date: Fri Jan 18, 2013 11:53 am ((PST))
On Friday, 18 January, 2013 16:29:32 you wrote:
> On 18/01/2013 11:27, Mathieu Roy wrote:
> > What are the advantages of speaking a less logical
> > language (a language with grammar rules with a lot of
> > exceptions, a lot of words with ambiguity, etc.)?
>
> Being human? :)
Indeed. The fundemental assumption behind loglangs is that the mind is
imprisoned by language: change the language, change the mind. (This notion
predates Sapir-Whorf by several hundred years.) Now, there is a bit of truth
to this, but I'm not going to go into it, because my belief is that the
equation is completely backwards: it is language that is imprisoned by the
mind. Language, as a construct of the human mind, cannot be truly freed from
its origins. Were it possible to wave a magic wand and make a logical language
widely spoken and understood among a significant cross-section of humanity,
within a very short time it would be changed into an increasingly less logical
language as the human instinct for play, evasion, imprecision, and humor
violently beats the crap out of logic and precision.
Although they can be fun to toy with, loglangs in essence are anti-
human. Fortunately, their very nature renders them a non-threat, so there is
no need to sally forth with torches and pitchforks. :)
:Peter
Messages in this topic (10)
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6.1. Re: infinite sentences (was: Word Limit)
Posted by: "Nikolay Ivankov" [email protected]
Date: Fri Jan 18, 2013 11:33 am ((PST))
On Fri, Jan 18, 2013 at 11:44 AM, George Corley <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 18, 2013 at 4:29 AM, Mathieu Roy <[email protected]
> >wrote:
>
> > <<This reminds me of something I heard about for mathematics -- that we
> > know
> > for similar reasons that there are an infinite number of prime numbers
> (you
> > can always find a higher one), but no one has ever formally proven it.>>
> > Well yes there is a proof. Let's say there is a finite number of primes.
> > Take a list of all of them. Then multiply all of these prime together and
> > let's call the result X. X+1 is another prime (because in order to be
> > divisible by a prime - or any number other than 1 and X+1 - we would have
> > had to add this prime to X, and 1 isn't a prime). X+1 wasn't on the list
> > because it's bigger than all number on the list since we multiply them
> and
> > all of them were bigger than one. So we now have a prime number that
> wasn't
> > on the list of all prime numbers. Therefore the list did not have all
> prime
> > numbers. So there's an infinite amount of prime number. Reductio ad
> > absurdum.
>
>
> But my understanding was that that is not a formal mathematical proof (by
> whatever rigid standard of logic that mathemeticians define a "proof"), but
> Wikipedia disagrees with me, listing several different proofs of the
> infinity of primes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_number
>
> I dunno. This is not a math list, so I suppose this discussion doesn't
> need to go any further. Maybe I'm thinking of some other obvious fact of
> mathematics that can't be formally proven.
>
That's Goedel Incompleteness Theorem. Given a finite number of axioms and
and derivation rules, you may always formulate a theorem that you may
neither prove nor disprove using them. Back to linguistics, if you have a
vocabulary and a grammar (which we may consider as a finite set of words
and rules), there always exists a sentence for which a language processing
machine won't be able to say whether it is grammatical or not.
> <<That's hard to say. First, you would have to determine the lexicon you
> > are generating from (and lexica of languages, I imagine, are arbitrarily
> > large
> > -- no doubt each individual's lexicon is finite, but it is unrealistic to
> > expect to be able to catalog all words known by all speakers). My guess
> > that generating a random string from any reasonably useful dictionary
> will
> > have a very low chance of providing a valid sentence, even allowing
> > grammatical sentences that are semantically/pragmatically nonsense like
> > "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.">>
> > Yes of course. I was thinking about using "Basic English". And I agree
> that
> > there's probably a very low chance that the sentence be valid. And maybe
> > that would be more feasible to start with a lower number, such as 9
> instead
> > of 15.
> >
>
> I would go with 5. I'm not sure how long sentences tend to be in normal
> speech, but I think that they're probably rather short.
>
> Still, I don't think you could calculate the probability with pure
> mathematics. You'd need to generate a bunch of sentences, ask a native
> speaker for grammaticality judgements, and do statistical analysis from
> that.
>
Messages in this topic (55)
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7.1. Re: Word Limit
Posted by: "David Peterson" [email protected]
Date: Fri Jan 18, 2013 11:52 am ((PST))
On Jan 18, 2013, at 6:22 AM, Matthew Martin <[email protected]> wrote:
> I see this so often I need a name for it and I've been calling it the
> solipsistic methodology. In the solipsistic methodology, there really isn't
> anything outside of the conlanger's desires that matters, which makes asking
> questions on a mailing list a sort of a strange behavior. I can only assume
> the OP asked the question because the answer has ramifications and a standard
> of truth that exists outside of his own mind. The truth value properties
> about statements about solipsists language exist only in his own head so why
> should that person ask questions? The only answer in a solipsist methodology
> would ever would be, well, "How do you feel about it? Really? That is
> correct." Anyhow, I encourage everyone to follow their joy, including
> solipsistic methodologies, I'm just a spectator here.
This is just what I've been saying about fiction. Author John P. Onlyme comes
up with a wonderfully interesting story (not a serial: just a novel), and it
generates a bit of a fan base, and some of the fans come to the conclusion that
certain scenes are too long or too short, and so they suggest that Onlyme
change it. And what does he do? He completely ignores themshuts them out, as
if the story only exists in his head, and no one else counts. Ho hum.
Eventually John P. Onlyme will die, and no one will remember his story or ever
read it againjust like every other work of fiction that isn't open to change.
So you don't have to connect the dots yourself here: A conlang need not merely
be a language. That's an advantage conlangs have over natural languages. There
is more than one way to interact with a conlangand, in fact, using the conlang
may not actually be the optimal way to interact with it.
David Peterson
LCS President
[email protected]
www.conlang.org
Messages in this topic (55)
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