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And Rosta wrote: > > Rex: > > Well, what I mean is that I want it to have the potential to be as > > unambiguous as Loglan. Preciseness when necessary. > > I had had the impression that Txeqli had downgraded the importance > of precision that Loglan sets such store by. However, if precision (i.e. > lack of logical and syntactic ambiguity) is a desideratum -- as I think > it should be (for that is the only reason to prefer a conlang to > English) -- then I know from experience that the most practical way > to proceed is to start with the precise structures and then think of > extra devices that can buy concision at the price of loss of precision, > rather than vice versa. Unfortunately, the precision can be bought > only at the price of eschewing natlang models. I can expatiate on > this more if necessary, but will only note at this point that "the potential > to be as unambiguous as Loglan" is not something that can be > bolted on once the bones of the language are already in place; > it must be the bones on which the rest of the language is built. [..] I pretty much agree with this, except for the part about precision being "the only reason to prefer a conlang to English". While I should say, up front, that I'm personally not interested in conlangs as such, I think that ease of learning could be another reason. Before I met Rex, my model for the ideal language was the syntax of Mandarin or Vietnamese, combined with the phonology and word structure of Japanese, Italian, or Malay. What I find appealing about Mandarin syntax is the lack of obligatory syntactic categories (gender, person, tense, etc.), the generally isolating character of the language, and the tendency to regularity in word order. Vietnamese, by the way, fits the more common model of an SVO language having head-modifier ordering, as opposed to the abnormal modifier-head ordering of Mandarin and English. So do Thai and Malay/Indonesian. If one were being extremely logical, it might make sense to investigate this possibility, rather than instinctively sticking to the familiar, but unusual, Mandarin/English model. (Anyone read Steven Pinker's _The Language Instinct_? It's full of interesting little tidbits like this, and it's a fun read--very well written.) Since I'm not convinced that a practical language can, or should, be strongly based on formal logic, that part of Loglan probably wouldn't appeal to me. On the other hand, reducing the ambiguity of the syntax seems more doable, and much more appealing. Even in a fairly regular language like Mandarin, we often have to depend on context to decide between two syntactically plausible meanings. One of the things I *don't* like about Rex's model is that there are too many ways to say the same thing--the equivalent of "the father of the bride" vs. "the bride's father", for example. This kind of flexibility came into English, and some other languages, as imports from unrelated or distantly related languages, not as part of the organic growth of the language in isolation. I suspect that this kind of flexibility will cause more confusion than it is worth, without really adding any value. I would prefer to see a relatively simple, internally consistent grammar (including syntax, phonology, word structure, and prosody) laid out in the abstract, then tested by plugging in lexical items in realistic situations. (I'm now beginning my fifteenth year as a professional computer programmer, so that's probably why the design-implement-test-modify-test-... paradigm appeals to me.) Once a working model is built, then it could be "humanized". Full formal syntax such as "Go txiq ke zi stu." could be supplemented by reduced forms like "Txiq stu." (By the way, I have a heck of a time saying "Go txiq ke zi stu." I keep wanting to say "Go txiq ke zi *tsu*." I'm not sure why. Guess I need to practice. Where can I buy the tapes?) -- Mike Wright http://www.CoastalFog.net _______________________________________________________ In my experience, mental health is a lot like sex-- sometimes you just have to fake it. -- Dee Dee Starr