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Mike: #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. Sure. For clarification, I'm not saying that English is the next best thing to the ideal language. Rather, I mean that when we factor in real-world considerations like the chances of any given language actually being learnt by many people across the world, *then* precision becomes the only reason to prefer a conlang to English. Yes, English is harder to learn than a language need be, and yes it's not culturally neutral, but it does do the job of serving as a medium of international communication, and no other language has a realistic chance of rivalling it. #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 l#ittle 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. I tend to agree with you. Ease of learning and of use is a key ingredient of a practical language, and this conflicts with logicality. Not because logicality is horribly difficult, but because of its unfamiliarity, its strangeness, because the superficial structures of natlangs differ considerably in form from the the structure of their underlying meanings. #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. I agree that this is quite doable. #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 think to some extent that has to be decided on a case by case basis. For English speakers (tho probably not Japanese), the structure "A of B of C of D of E" is easier to comprehend than "E's D's C's B's A". *However*, "John's sister's husband's mother's brother's wife" is easier to comprehend than "The wife of the brother of the mother of the husband of the sister of John", because in both cases John is the reference point relative to which the referent of the overall phrase is determined. #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.) The problem with this, as you as a programmer must know, is that beyond a certain point, simplicity is unnatural and hence difficult! It works for computer languages because of the limited range of the sorts of things you need to say in them, and the overrding imperative of clarity. #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." That certainly was essentially my idea. I guess the issue for the Cenqlians is how inhuman the working model is allowed to be! --And.