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